What on earth is happening to the Republicans? While it’s unfair to judge a broad-based party by the actions of a clearly demented few, recent events on the campaign trail are drawing even staunch conservatives to wonder where things went so horribly wrong. Highly publicized reports have audience members yelling “Terrorist!” and “Kill him!” in response to John McCain’s and Sarah Palin’s provocative stump speeches. Racist epithets have rained down on black stage workers. Observers on both sides note the atmosphere more often than not resembles a lynch mob than a political rally. Perhaps realizing the damage being wrought on his election chances — and, worse yet, on his vaunted honor — McCain broke from his running mate’s race-baiting rhetoric, stating yesterday that supporters need not fear Barack Obama nor his potential presidency. His calls for a return to rationality were met with jeers. One woman refused the senator’s request, saying she still didn’t trust Obama because “he’s an Arab.” Are these really the kinds of people to whom McCain, hemorrhaging poll points like a hemophiliac, should be handing microphones? Tellingly, many of the right wing’s most tenacious rowers are showing signs of jumping ship. Last week on Larry King Live, National Review columnist Kathleen Parker (who last month called for Palin to spare McCain by abdicating her nomination) and longtime Republican strategist Michelle Laxalt expressed their disdain for the direction of Steve Schmidt’s campaign, indicating their votes might be up for grabs come Nov. 4. Talk about your October surprises: Who could have guessed that it would be the self-appointed maverick who has yet to get started, and not the slaphappy moron who is a public mockery, to slip a poison pill to the Grand Old Party?

The Walkmen are playing at Republic New Orleans tonight. It’s a good band. You should go see them.

I often hear from my Republican friends that they support John McCain and denounce Barack Obama because they are in favor of “small government.” To this line of thinking I say: There is no such thing as big government versus small government. Not anymore. Not when supposed fiscal conservatives double down on the federal deficit in less than a decade, purported supporters of hands-off libertarianism write and pass constitutionally questionable legislation in the name of patriotism, and lifelong deregulators call for increased federal oversight and less federal interference in the same breath. In fact, there is no such thing anymore as speaking about American government in any kinds of generalized terms. There are only the people we place in charge. It is their philosophies, their instincts, values, priorities and judgments, that will determine what kind of government we have. Whether it will be one that engages the global community with international diplomacy, or employs hawkish tactics of threat and intimidation; one that speaks to its citizens as informed, empowered adults, or placates them with platitudes like naïve children. These are the terms on which we should be debating what sort of government we support — not small or large, but smart or lost.      

That’s the estimated aggregate bill — so far — of the war on Iraq and the financial “rescue” package. (”And that’s without tip!” Garry Shandling quipped on Real Time with Bill Maher.) It’s a number I hope gets mentioned every time John McCain or Sarah Palin utter the words, “Where is that money going to come from?” in response to one of Barack Obama’s proposals for universal health care or alternative energy. Shandling and Maher, of all people, spoke such simple truths on the HBO program last week that I actually stopped my DVR, backed up and wrote down their words. Here they are in their entirety: 
Shandling: ”John McCain cannot be saying we’re winning the war in Iraq at the same time we’re going bankrupt. That means we’re losing, because everybody has forgotten the connection. The planes [hitting] the buildings was an economic attack, am I correct? And if we didn’t spend X trillion into this war, we might not have to put — we might be able to handle the housing issue.”
Maher: ”Fareed Zakaria, in one of his columns, recently said that for the cost of the war, we could’ve had health care for every man, woman and child in America; could’ve rebuilt every road, bridge and school in America; and started multiple Manhattan Projects for alternative energy. Now why doesn’t the Democrat say that, the next time one of them says, ‘The surge is working!’”

Kudos to author, director and Gambit Weekly contributor Jason Berry, whose film Vows of Silence, an exposé on the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal, was named Best TV Documentary by Mexico City’s Festival Internacional de Cine Documental. Read more about Berry’s film in my April Gambit review, archived here.

On CNN this morning, a talk radio host in St. Louis declared Sarah Palin’s performance in the VP debate a success, citing her use of “complete sentences.” (Up next on AC360: McCain surges ahead on strength of subject/verb agreement!) To anyone else disappointed by Palin’s, um,  non-face-plant last night, take heart in knowing that the Katie Couric clips just won’t die. At around the one-and-a-half minute mark of this latest chestnut, after Joe Biden says Dick Cheney’s shredding of the Constitution has been more harmful “than any other single elected official in my memory,” Palin deems Icky Dick’s biggest failing to be accidentally shooting Harry Whittington on a hunting trip in 2006. Really? Not advocating torture in worldwide rendition camps? Not selling Americans on WMDs in order to sell Iraq to Halliburton? Not inflating his own legislative influence through the dissolution of checks and balances? Nope: “Worst thing, I guess, that woulda been the duck hunting accident (Ed. note: it was quail), where, you know, that was, that was an accident. And that was made into a caricature of him, and that was kind of unfortunate.” Lodging buckshot in your buddy is a big no-no in Wasilla, dontcha know.    

photo credit: Gary Hershorn, Reuters
The cliché juxtaposing Wall Street and Main Street was killed yesterday, beaten to death by Washington, D.C., legislators after a long period of overuse by presidential candidates and television pundits. The actual age of the cliché was unknown. The Wall Street/Main Street cliché is survived by two prominent catchphrases, It’s a Free Country! and It Is What It Is, and several lesser-known dependent idioms.    

Obligatory Tipper Gore Warning: this video contains artistic PG-13 nudity!
Quite possibly — catching Okkervil River, Crooked Fingers and Black Joe Lewis at Republic New Orleans tonight for little more than the price of three Verti Marte side dishes is, at the very least, the year’s best concert value. As Alison Fensterstock notes in the current issue of Gambit Weekly, Okkervil’s The Stage Names vaulted the group from regional darling to bona fide buzz band in 2007. But I suspect 2008 will belong to tourmate Crooked Fingers. The Appalachian folk/rock outfit fronted by former Archer of Loaf Eric Bachmann is no unknown quantity; its latest offering, Forfeit/Fortune (CAI/Red Pig), due next week in an unusual, strategic rollout, will be its fifth this decade. The 11-track record is a new benchmark for the band, however — definitely its best since 2003’s Red Devil Dawn, and potentially its best, period. Bachmann continues his exploration of exotic international sounds — most notably on the flamenco dance “Phony Revolutions” (above), mariachi march “No Me Lo Des” and feedback-draped “Sinisteria” — but it’s on two hard-charging anthems that close the album where the singer really takes control. “Modern Dislocation” packs a pulsing, hair-raising hook, and “Your Control” pairs Bachmann’s clay-pot vocals with the gilded pipes of Neko Case (enough said). It’s a remarkably strong finish to one of the year’s strongest LPs.  

Obama, following a lecture by McCain on presidential prudence in foreign policy: “From someone who threatened extinction for North Korea and sang songs about bombing Iran, I don’t know how credible that is.” Cue the creepy smile.

The biggest moment of the debate so far: John McCain’s call for a “spending freeze” on everything besides defense and veterans affairs. Barack Obama’s response? Paraphrased: “The problem with that is you’re using a hatchet where you need a scalpel.” Education? Alternative energy? Victims of the hatchet, we can assume?