Baghdad John

So I think things are reaching the point where John McCain and the Republicans have reached the wall for how dirty, nasty, etc. they can be (or rather, diminishing returns - I still fully expect them to sink lower). The next step is complete denial of reality.

Now there has always been a strong streak in conservatism to dismiss the "reality-based community," so to speak. But the current dissonance must be creating really psychic damage among the conservative right.

You could see this pretty clearly in John McCain's interview on Fox News this morning. He sees no commonality with the Robocalls he's running and the ones run against him in 2000. Just like in the debate, he viciously attacks Obama on the Ayers association, and then in very next sentence talks about how his campaign is all about the economy. He bashed Obama on the "spread the wealth" comment, linking him to socialist thinking, and then immediately defended the decision to inject capital directly into banks, something that is literally a socialist action, by saying that it was necessary.

These are just a few examples with "straight talk" John McCain. It's much the same with the rest of the conservative commentariat and his campaign surrogates. In the last few days alone, they've gone on crazy rants, implied that those who vote for Obama are not "real Americans", and have come up with crackpot theories about election fraud.

And they're also in deep denial about the polls, getting their online hatchet-man Drudge to cherry-pick results (the real winner of this election has to be fivethirtyeight.com).

Marc Ambinder has a great take on this general phenomenon.

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So I think we're heading towards Baghdad Bob territory here. Everything is fine, they say, no need to believe your lying eyes as the tanks near the city. Now, of course, none of this is new. We've seen this type of denial of reality from the beginning of the Bush administration (and before). But I really think the only proper analogy that can be made is with propaganda coming from a dictatorship.

And I don't mean this in a "oh, they're evil dictators" sort of way. I mean this in a "they're so ridiculous" sort of way. It must be pretty embarrassing to have such bad spin on your side. Putin's people could have done a lot better.

Bush and McCain may have overthrown Saddam and Baghdad Bob, but it has now led to Baghdad John as the Republican presidential nominee. And I'm pretty sure their regime is going to be overrun pretty soon as well.