Rejected Republican Conservatives react by exposing their Fascist - McCarthyite roots. They provoke a backlash

The Republican Party has come face-to-face with the fact that the American voters are rejecting conservatives and the Bush administration. With slightly over two weeks remaining until the election, the Republicans are resorting to their Fascist - "Joe McCarthy" roots to try to scare voters into electing John McCain and right-wing extremists.

This has always been an undercurrent of Republican campaigns, but in their desperation they are now making the Fascist - McCarthyite campaigning their primary effort to defeat Obama. It is resulting in a massive backlash against the conservatives. A prime example of the Fascist - McCarthyite rhetoric was Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann's rant on Matthew's Hardball the other day.



The reaction to Bachmann's extremist rant was swift. Steve Benen explains:

While many have condemned Bachmann's embrace of what can fairly be described as bordering on fascism, many of those offended by Bachmann have also thrown considerable support to Bachmann's opponent, former state transportation chief Elwyn Tinklenberg. The Democrat posted an item to Daily Kos last night, talking about the outpouring of support his campaign has received since Bachmann's shocking comments.

The last few hours have been nothing short of astounding. Since Congresswoman Michele Bachmann appeared on MSNBC's Hardball earlier tonight, there's been a deluge of support unlike anything we have seen. [...]

Our phones haven't stopped ringing. Many have called in to say they're sorry they can only send money and wish they could be here to help.

What kind of help are we talking about here? Tinklenberg raised over $488,000 in just 24 hours. That's pretty impressive.

Bachmann's rant is not an isolated case. The McCain campaign has begun a series of extreme robo-calls targeted at voters in swing states that even the New York Times has taken notice of. While McCain campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds is reported as defending them saying, “These calls are based on hard facts," they have received bipartisan criticism. One notable critic is Maine Senator Susan Collins whose spokesman Kevin Kelley stated "These kind of tactics have no place in Maine politics. Senator Collins urges the McCain campaign to stop these calls immediately." Yet the McCain camp has focused much of its entire campaign on Obama's alleged connection to Bill Ayers because of Ayers' connection with "The Weatherman" four decades ago. Today America is facing an economic crisis that closely resembles the Great Depression, and yet the Republicans and the McCain camp want to focus on Ayers.

The reaction to the incompetence and extreme nastiness displayed by the McCain camp is showing in the "dollar campaign." According to the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON – Barack Obama raised more than $150 million in September, a stunning and unprecedented eruption of political giving that has given him a wide spending advantage over rival John McCain.

This money has allowed Obama to spend four times as much as on TV advertising as the McCain camp.

The Republican voter suppression efforts (such as this effort to intimidate newly registered voters in Ohio and this effort by the politicized Department of Justice to investigate the voter's registration efforts of ACORN.) are being widely reported. Again, the conservatives cannot win over the voters, so they are trying to stop them from voting.

The ability of the Obama campaign to raise unprecedented amounts of money is one example of the backlash against the conservatives. Another is this morning's announcement by Colin Powell on Meet the Press that he is going to vote for Barack Obama.

The Presidential campaign based on issues, never seriously engaged by the McCain camp, ended with the worsening of the credit crisis demonstrated by the failures of the major Wall Street investment banks and the Wall Street bailouts several weeks ago. McCain has not seriously addressed either the credit crisis or the no longer deniable Recession. The only Republican conservative campaign in October has been the Fascist - McCarthyite attacks on Obama that exposes the core nature of the Conservative ideology that has dominated American politics since 1980.

The backlash to the failure of the Reagan Revolution is already clear in the Presidential money campaign and the abandonment of support for McCain by prominent Republicans like Colin Powell. Much of this is currently a result of the extremist nature of the McCain campaign, but the current extremist nature of the McCain campaign is a result of the recognized failure of the Reagan Revolution and the conservative ideology.

It's going to be an interesting 16 days until the election. But that's just political froth. For two more weeks we will focus on the election, but after that the real fun is going to start. We are going to have to face the reality that the Reagan Revolution has created.