Matt Taibbi: Still Awesome

Matt Taibbi continues to prove he is a national treasure. His latest is entitled “Requiem for a Maverick” and does a little post-mortem on the McCain campaign. Some good bits:

They weren’t just beaten; the very idea of Republican conservatism was massively rejected in virtually every state where large chunks of the population do not believe in the literal existence of a horned devil, and even in some that do.
. . .
They compounded a millionfold Bush’s legacy of incompetence by soiling both possible Republican ideological strategies going forward: They killed off Bush-style neoconservatism as well as the more traditional fiscal conservatism McCain himself was once known for by trying to fuse both approaches into one gorgeously incoherent ticket. It was like trying to follow the recipes for Texas 10-alarm chili and a three-layer Black Forest chocolate cake in the same pan at the same time. The result — well, just take a bite!
. . .
Instead of a plan, they had an endless succession of dumb ideas scrapped at the 11th hour in favor of even dumber ones.
. . .
In short, McCain entered this election season being the worst thing that anyone can be, in the eyes of the Rove-school Republicans: Different. Independent. His own man. He exited the campaign on his knees, all his dignity gone, having handed the White House to the hated liberals after spending the last months of the race with numb-nuts Sarah Palin on his arm and Karl Rove’s cock in his mouth. Even if you wanted to vote for him, you didn’t know who you were voting for. The old McCain? The new McCain? Neither? Both?
. . .
[In 2004], you had a millionaire Yalie in an army jacket taking on a millionaire Yalie in a cowboy hat, fighting tooth and nail for the right to be named the man “middle America most wants to have a beer with” by a gang of Ivy League journalists — a group of people whose closest previous exposure to “middle America” was typically either an episode of Cops or a Von Dutch trucker hat they’d bought for $23 at Urban Outfitters.

Definitely worth reading the whole thing.