'The last great illusion of the Republican Party'

" ... how do you communicate to someone the sheer insanity of voting to bomb the f*** out of some distant country while you sit safe and cozy in the Virginia suburbs, evaluating sweetbreads -- just so the world can keep on feeling like the heroic war movies you rock yourself to sleep with on Sunday afternoons?

The answer is you can't. And that is one big reason why John McCain, defying the expectations of almost everyone who watched him last
summer -- myself included -- has risen from the political dead to wrap up the GOP nomination. He's survived because Onward to Victory is the last great illusion the Republican Party has left to sell in this country, even to its own followers. They can't sell fiscal responsibility, they can't sell "values," they can't sell competence, they can't sell small government, they can't even sell the economy. All they have left to offer is this sad, dwindling, knee-jerk patriotism, a promise to keep selling world politics as a McHale's Navy rerun to a Middle America that wants nothing to do with realizing the world has changed since 1946.

The lesson of the McCain campaign is that one should never underestimate America's capacity for self-delusion. Balls-deep in one
of the biggest foreign-policy catastrophes of all time, an arrogant military misadventure destined to make us infamous for a generation
across a dozen cultures, minivan-driving suburban America is still waiting for Bill Holden to make it right by blowing up the Bridge on
the River Kwai -- and returning, tanned and handsome, to get the girl with a mouth full of cool one-liners. ... "

~ From McCain Resurrected ~