Sarah Palin and the GOP Three-Ring Circus.

If they succeed in this, this will be Karl Rove's greatest feat of legerdemain yet. Never mind that John McCain owns so many houses that he can't keep track of them and that Sarah Palin owns three of her own. Karl Rove would say wrong is right and right is wrong if that's what it took to win the next election. He would convince you that millionaires McCain and Palin are the best people for the job and really care about people like you while a community organizer like Barack Obama and a family man like Joe Biden who rose from middle class roots to be an American success story are somehow elitist and out of touch.

And John McCain will go down in history as the man who waved the magic wand three times -- first, when it best suited his purposes in 1992, he was an insider little better than Ted Stevens. Then, from 1992-2004 or so, he was an outsider, a maverick crusading against the system, who publicly flirted with switching to the Democratic Party and becoming John Kerry's running mate. Then, with the wave of the magic wand, he all of a sudden became George Bush's faithful lapdog. Then, with the wave of the magic wand, with his pick of Sarah Palin, he became the outsider raging against the machine again, hopefully with James Dobson in tow. And it seems that God did in fact answer Dobson's prayers, since Gustav gave him a convenient excuse to cancel Bush and Cheney's appearances for Monday night.

Too bad. John McCain was right in 2000 when he protested against the fundamentalist base and championed campaign finance reform. Now, he bows at the feet of Dobson by picking someone even more extreme than he is, and weasels his way around the very laws that he once championed even as he dons his maverick image once again. But for all his waving of the magic wand, there is one thing that has been a constant for John McCain -- the New Morality, or morality for the other person and not for one's self.

And get this -- John McCain aided and abetted the war crimes of the Bush administration in Iraq. But then, with a blare of trumpets, John McCain turns around and says that the surge worked and that Petraeus is the greatest military man ever. But wait -- now, all of a sudden, the Republican Party Platform has become so vague on Iraq after their calls for perpetual warfare that one might think they don't really believe their own rhetoric about staying there forever or cut and run.

And of course they send in the clowns on a daily basis -- faithful lapdogs in the media like Ron Fournier who are still stuck in the same tired old politics of the past and who do nothing but sit at a desk and repeat talking points. This would be one of the most hilarious spectacles on earth if it were not for the fact that the blood of millions of people is on their hands. These people belong in prison garb awaiting trial for war crimes, not seeking the public trust for four more years after having got it wrong for the last eight. And that is more lenient than what Michael Reagan would do, seeing that he once called for the arrest, trial, and execution of Howard Dean because he didn't like something he said.