"Fellow citizens," George Bush said last night, "if the Hanoi Hilton could not break John McCain's resolve to do what is best for his country, you can be sure the angry left never will." Well, the so-called angry left won't have to because the angry right already did it.
According to Republicans themselves, it was pressure from the party's rapture freaks that made McCain - the guy who won't bend under pressure - cry uncle and choose Sarah Palin as his running mate, over such preferred choices as Joe Lieberman, Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney and others.
How this happened is something that we can only imagine. Did they have something on the media's favorite maverick? Did he simply change his mind - and apologies for rolling out this overworked phrase - to "shore up the base"? Or did he actually think that she was the best idea?
However it played out, George Bush's Roveian equation of the left with the North Vietnamese is not just inflammatory, it's backwards - because it's his very own people who have broken McCain. In doing so, they have foisted one of the worst running mates in American history onto the ballot and all too close to a possible Presidency.