That worked out so well for Rome, after all

This is terrifyingly perceptive:

Because win or lose, make no mistake about it, brand McCain has been destroyed. And therein we see the long arm of George Bush and the hand of Karl Rove. It may well be that a scorched earth campaign was his only shot, but consider how every attack and every lie, while they serve to smear Obama, also serve to undermine he credibility, honor and self-image of John McCain. I can hear George cackling as Karl explained how cool it would be: We might just pull out a win for the folks who own the country, but at the same time we totally fuck over McCain by getting him to destroy the only thing he really had going for him....

It can be useful to look at what happened to he succession of power once ancient Rome made the transition from republic to empire under Julius Caesar. I think of it as the Tiberius Gambit. Each emperor did his best to ensure that the one who followed him could never rival his achievements. And it was a short step indeed for Tiberius to inflict he egregious Caligula on the empire, secure in the knowledge that he would make the populace yearn for the comparatively golden days of his own rule. So Augustus gave us Tiberius, Tiberius gave us Caligula and the accidental Claudius gave us Nero. Nero almost destroyed the Roman economy by his personal greed and burned part of Rome intending, perhaps, to remove the blight of a quarter congested with the urban poor. When it got way out of hand and he began to feel universal public opprobrium, he blamed it on a fringe group of alien terrorists, the early Christians.

So Bush would give us McCain and McCain would give us Palin and Palin will ignite the fire and fiddle while the planet burns.

Ah, the wrecking crew at work.