Unity Day

While it is certainly entertaining to watch John-the-cool, -the-experienced, -the-tested, -the-presidential flounder in the murky yellow babypool of his campaign, far too little attention is being paid to the deep divisions within present-day Republicanism.

This is odd coming after the non-stop speculation about whether the Clintons and the Obamanians were heading for Donnybrook in Denver. But it turns out the political crevasse of today is on the GOP side.

McCain’s goofball move in bringing Sara-the-Hair aboard ship and promptly sinking it wouldn’t have happened if the party had been capable of letting him have Lieberman, his first choice. That would have given him the tough-guy national security team he feels most comfortable in and allowed him to stage his own bomber-boy routines on aircraft carriers.

It probably wouldn’t have worked, but it does play to his strengths. At the least he would now be talking about his imprisonment in North Vietnam rather than teen pregnancy.

But the religious ideologues weren’t going to sit still for a Jewish abortionist, and nobody was too charged up about the other options, either. The aberrant Palin choice followed, to the delight of the Bible-thumpers.

Splitsville. No one else could be too pleased with this move, and the neocon megapatriots must be furiously rewriting their martial-arts script with Obama as the neophyte wimp too naïve to stare down the enemy. Kinda hard to sell that when your team’s No. 2 is just back from the hospital with a fifth baby.

While the Republicans put on a show of unity, their party is creakier underneath than the Greenland Ice Shelf. If they weren’t all reading from the same playbook, the TV pontiff-commentators might be examining the floes.