Another gift to McCain and Palin as they campaign in Iowa from one of that state's top political reporters, David Yepsen:
That popping sound you hear is the sound of the rural Republican base cracking under John McCain.
A Center for Rural Strategies poll released last week found Democrat Barack Obama leads McCain 46 percent to 45 percent among rural voters in 13 battleground states, including Iowa.
That's amazing. Ordinarily, a Republican presidential candidate should expect to carry the voters from small towns, farms and ranches by double-digit margins. In 2004, these rural battleground areas went for George W. Bush by 15 percentage points....
Then on Thursday, Iowa Republican U.S. Senate candidate Christopher Reed called Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin a "Tokyo Rose" and accused him of giving "aid and comfort" to the enemy.
Most of us thought the anti-American rhetoric in this country died out when Joe McCarthy hit the bottom of his bottle back in the 1950s. But Reed becomes the third GOP candidate in recent days to traffic in such language, and it just doesn't work. Like $150,000 wardrobes, it backfires. But it does reflect the growing desperation in Republican circles.
Harkin told Reed "you're a nice young man and I thought you had a political future ahead of you, but that just ended your political career right there" and walked away.
Add this all up, and the only questions that remain are how many other Republican careers the looming Obama-Harkin landslide will end. Will it enable Becky Greenwald to oust Congressman Tom Latham? Will it enable Democrats to win more than 60 Iowa House seats?
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