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The problem for the post Reagan Republican party is this. Their real agenda is to constantly tweak the tax code so more and more money flows from the bottom 95% of Americans to the top 5%, and almost all of it goes to the top 1%.

Now it is difficult to win elections with no more than 5% of the vote, And you even have morally concerned billionaires like Warren Buffet who want no part of this push for turning America into a banana republic.

So the New Republicans have to build a base by appealing to every emotional issue out there. There's been hate of abortion, gays, Willy Horton style racism, Jesus votes Republican, if you're not with us you're a socialist or terrorist or anti-American. Vote for us or die. Bin Laden's planning his next attack and only we can stop him (even though we failed last time -- but that was Bill Clinton's fault).

Sarah Palin appealed to the Republican base. These are almost exclusively people who are not part of the wealthy elite who need their votes to keep raking in the cash of the middle class. And Charlie Crist couldn't have moved these geniuses to vote against their own interests one more time. Maybe if his name has been Charlie Christ, it would have worked.

But the simple fact is that the "Borrow and Spend" Republicans have run up 11 trillion dollars of taxes for us and our kids to pay while pushing economic disparity to the same level of unfairness it reached at the start of the great depression. The top 1% now earn 20% of all income and own 50% of all the wealth in America. Real income for the middle class has dropped 8% over the last 30 years of Republican rule, driven mostly by the tax code adjustments and the wild increase in cost of health care. And McSame wants to not only extend George Bush's policies that got us to the brink of economic disaster -- he wants to double down on Bush's bad decisions.

I don't think anyone short of the Messiah could help him as a running mate. And only then if he could force an epiphany in McCain's beliefs.

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