McCain Implodes

Seven years ago, I watched Anne Widdecombe give her notorious, and final, speech to the Conservative Party Conference. Hitting every populist note, she brought the tepid conference to a fervour that verged on a desperate type of hysteria.

As the applause rang out amongst the geriatric activiste the BBC had a long, low tracking shot from the stage to the back of the hall. As it swung through the cheap seats it was spotted by an elderly man wearing that combination of beige and pale blue socks that marks a dedicated Daily Mail reader.

He spotted the camera and turned round, muscles tense, his jugular vein standing proud and with tears in his eyes he shook his fist at the camera and cried "At last! We've got a leader!"

Actually no. The next day the shadow cabinet has a suspiciously orderly series of leaks and off the cuff remarks that sank dear old Doris Karloff's ambitions.

What's this got to do with anything? Well it struck me that Sarah Palin is really Widdecombe-lite. She can stiffen the sinews of the real hardcore but just fails completely in a wider political arena. Her political 'philosophy' is to support anything that would give Charlton Heston an erection.

When she was picked, I said that this was the day McCain lost the election and it seems like it was. Mainstream Republicans and Conservatives have come out for Obama and all of them have cited Palin as a reason for ditching the GOP faster than McCain ditched his plane.

for good reasom. We now hear that McCain wanted the less divisive figure of Lieberman. What serious Presidential candidate doesn't pick their number two? So it seems that the shadowy neo-cons are just hiding behind the curtains and calling McCain's shots. No wonder his campaign is in tailspin.

The aspirant VP has been kept away from the press, apart from a few lackeys as even the simplest appearance ends in embarrassment. Now this hocky mom turns pout to have a compulsive spending disorder that would have Cleopatra envious.

At least they will win the American vote. They'll lose the election, but as they now define America as the more inbred parts of the rural South and an auto-repair shop in Denver, they will win big in Real America.