The Note: Rogue Wave

Oct. 27, 2008— -- Just on the off-chance that Barack Obama isn't right where John McCain wants him (in front of 100,000 people in Denver?) -- and since we already know that Sarah Palin isn't always where McCain wants her to be . . .

What's at stake now for McCain and the GOP has morphed into something much larger than a presidential campaign.

On the ballot in eight days' time is the fate of a political party -- in an election that will align government for at least the next two critical years, if not considerably more.

We all know better now that to start talking "permanence," but the question for McCain and party leaders is less about how to win but how to avoid a wipeout that will take more than an election cycle or two to climb back from.

As Obama starts his turn to a closing argument -- his speech in Canton, Ohio Monday hits on themes of "new politics" he first sounded back in Springfield last winter -- Team McCain is left arguing over whose fault the closing is.

It's not just a running mate who's on her own (which worked so well for Dan Quayle) . . . or angry money folks . . . or GOPers saving reputations if they can't their party . . . or new clothes making another new story (but is a $50,000 spending spree really that much better?).

It's a party on the precipice of historic, across-the-board defeat -- and this is when it starts getting ugly.

"John McCain is losing in a way that threatens to take the entire Republican Party down with him," David Frum writes in the Sunday Washington Post. "In these last days before the vote, Republicans need to face some strategic realities. Our resources are limited, and our message is failing. We cannot fight on all fronts. We are cannibalizing races that we must win and probably can win in order to help a national campaign that is almost certainly lost. In these final 10 days, our goal should be: senators first."

"The Obama campaign is marching toward the biggest nonincumbent Democratic presidential victory since 1932, and the Democratic Party is fighting its way toward its best overall presidential and Congressional year since 1964," Bill Kristol writes in his New York Times column. "Situation not-so-excellent. Time for McCain to attack -- or, rather, finally to make his case."

Kristol has an expensive (and impractical) wish-list, and: "McCain has a chance to close this election in a big and positive way. He has a chance to get voters to rise above the distractions and to set aside the petty aspects of the campaign. He has a chance to remind them why they have admired him, and perhaps to persuade them to vote for him on Nov. 4."

A new GOP talking point (via Drudge): Obama, in a 2001 radio interview said the Warren Court "wasn't that radical," and said it was "one of the tragedies of the civil rights movement" that it sought to use the courts to achieve "redistributive change.": "The Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth."

Red-state blues: "Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama are heading into the final week of the presidential campaign planning to spend nearly all their time in states that President Bush won last time, testimony to the increasingly dire position of Mr. McCain and his party as Election Day approaches," Adam Nagourney and Jeff Zeleny write in The New York Times. "From here on out, Mr. Obama's aides said, attacks on Mr. McCain will be joined by an emphasis on broader and less partisan themes, like the need to unify the country after a difficult election."

"Any serious Republican has to ask, 'How did we get into this mess?' " said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker.

"The Republican Party is in the toilet for a reason," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos."

Past tense: "Something fundamental and significant happened," Ken Mehlman, the former RNC chairman, tells The New York Times' John Harwood.

"Democrats and Republicans alike say it will be extraordinarily difficult for McCain to change the trajectory of the campaign before the Nov. 4 election," per the AP's Liz Sidoti.

Even inside the ticket? "Aides to Sen. John McCain anonymously attacked Palin in several reports today, criticizing the Alaska governor for diverting from the McCain campaign's message, suggesting Palin was unhappy with certain campaign aides and accusing her of thinking more about her political future than about the success of the McCain-Palin ticket," ABC's Kate Snow and Imtiyaz Delawala report.

Politico's Ben Smith: "Four Republicans close to Palin said she has decided increasingly to disregard the advice of the former Bush aides tasked to handle her, creating occasionally tense situations as she travels the country with them. Those Palin supporters, inside the campaign and out, said Palin blames her handlers for a botched rollout and a tarnished public image -- even as others in McCain's camp blame the pick of the relatively inexperienced Alaska governor, and her public performance, for McCain's decline."

Said Karl Rove on Fox News, of the backbiting: "It's generally a sign that people are throwing in the towel and thinking that they're going to lose."

Leaving the clothing behind: "I'm back to wearing my own clothes from my favorite consignment shop in Anchorage, Alaska," Palin said Sunday, ABC Kate Snow reported on "Good Morning America" Monday.

Not too early to rebuild: "Even as Republican nominee John McCain seeks to separate himself from an unpopular President Bush, some Republicans are rejecting McCain as well as Bush," Susan Milligan reports in The Boston Globe. "And many party leaders are preparing to remake the damaged party after what they unhappily anticipate will be a bad day for the GOP on Nov. 4."

Not too early to worry, either: "Democrats, who are within reach of the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster in the Senate, would also face high expectations, especially from the party's more liberal quarters, that could be difficult to meet even with enhanced numbers in the Senate as well as the House. And they would be at risk of overreaching, a tendency that has deeply damaged both parties in similar situations in the past," Carl Hulse and David M. Herszenhorn report in the Sunday New York Times.

Don't get comfortable: "Despite the nation's polarization along partisan and ideological lines, the number of swing voters remains large enough to rapidly undercut any Democratic or Republican coalition in reaction to shifting events," John Harwood writes in The New York Times.

Obama: ready to disappoint? "He suggests the country can have universal health-care coverage, make a huge downpayment on energy independence and fund expensive alternative-energy sources, enact a variety of new domestic initiatives and cut taxes for 80 percent of Americans. All in his first term," Bloomberg's Al Hunt writes. "That is good politics in the fall of 2008; it will make for difficult governance in 2009."