TIMES OP-ED "LIBERALS" ARE WORKING HARDER TO ELECT A REPUBLICAN IN '08 THAN ACTUAL REPUBLICANS ARE

Republicans, doggedly refusing to coalesce around John McCain, decided to punish the guy Rush hates by voting for the other guy Rush hates:

Mike Huckabee swept to victory in the Kansas Republican presidential caucuses yesterday, beating his party's presumptive nominee John McCain by a margin of more than 2-1.

Huckabee also won in Louisiana.... The Washington state caucuses were too close to call....

Well, so much for the theory that Huck was staying in just to siphon votes away from Mitt Romney on behalf of his pal John McCain. Humiliating the front-runner -- not a good way to get a spot on the ticket.

At this point the the GOP looks like a dictatorship after the downfall of the Maximum Leader -- candidates, voters, and bloviators alike are running amok in the streets; they're not even concerned about eventually establishing order because they've been living in a culture of intimidation, and now they're taking what they've learned for years and are practicing it on one another. If you want to understand the GOP in 2008, think of Iraq after the fall of Saddam.

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All the polls say that Republicans have a fine chance of winning with McCain (I think Digby is nuts for saying that Republicans "know they are going to lose" and are planning to "blame the loss on the fact that McCain wasn't a real conservative" -- they can read polls), but apparently Republicans don't want to win with him. Not to worry: The "liberals" on the op-ed page of The New York Times are doing their damnedest to save Republicans from themselves and ensure a GOP victory in November.

Today it's Frank Rich, going absolutely medieval on Hillary Clinton. Let's see: there's a "Stepford" here, a "synthetic product leeched of most human qualities" there, a comparison to Bush's "Mission Accomplished" moment over there; we're told to watch for "how nastily the Clintons will fight," out of "cold, political cost-benefit calculus," because Barack Obama faces "a Clinton combine so ruthless that it risked shredding three decades of mutual affection with black America to win a primary." Which is true, and not easily forgiven, but the Clintons have since dialed it down quite a bit.

Except that, according to Rich, they haven't. His evidence? (1) A Clinton pollster told The New Yorker that, in his opinion, Hispanics prefer not to vote for blacks; (2) a televised Clinton town meeting had no blacks among the ordinary citizens who asked questions of Mrs. Clinton -- although a black woman co-hosted the show. (Hmmm ... were there any country singers in that "Yes, We Can" video?) Wow -- it's David Duke redux!

Let's see: Frank Rich hates the Clintons. Paul Krugman has a bug up his ass about Obama. Maureen Dowd hates the Clintons and Obama. Who needs Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity to demonize the Democrats when the op-ed regulars of the Times will gladly do the job themselves, using pretty much the same language?