The last Arizona Senator to lead the Republican party to disaster and decades wandering the political wilderness was "Mr. Conservative" himself, Barry Goldwater.
Goldwater's conservatism would be unrecognizable today. Sure, Goldwater rejected the New Deal, and championed libertarianism, but he was a champion of gay rights and choice. Bigotry presented as religion, aka "Family ValuesTM" would have made Goldwater cringe. Conservative intellectuals, however, see the history of conservatism repeating itself in McCain and they are hoping to re-live the conservative resurgence which began a scant few years after Goldwater's failure, and continued through Nixonland to this day.
Think of Al Gore winning the Democratic nomination in the year 2000 whose positions included halving the military budget, socializing the medical system, re-regulating the communications and electrical industries, establishing a guaranteed minimum income for all Americans, and equalizing funding for all schools regardless of property valuations - and who promised to fire Alan Greenspan, counseled withdrawal from the World Trade Organization, and, for good measure, spoke warmly of adolescent sexual experimentation. He would lose in a landslide. He would be relegated to the ash heap of history. But if the precedent of 1964 were repeated, two years later the country would begin electing dozens of men and women just like him. And not many decades later, Republicans would have to proclaim softer versions of those positions to get taken seriously for their party's nomination. "
-Historian Rick Perlstein in his book Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus
This country is facing an uphill climb as we try to recover from multiple monumental disasters brought about by the failures of conservatism under George W. Bush and John McCain. In the years ahead, we will need unity more than ever before. These ACORN attacks, attempts to disenfranchise voters, and "terrorist", "socialist", "welfare", smears against Barack Obama, unfortunately are not about this current election. They are about stoking the victim mentality of social conservative voters, so Republicans can resurrect the party from the ashes of the impending generational loss they see coming on November 4.
The McCain campaign is consciously stoking feelings of victimization among the lower-income, less educated social conservative base, not in order to compete for this election, but to keep the fires of resentment burning bright. It appears that conservatives believe those fires will keep the base stoked through the coming years. They foresee years in opposition until the movement can coalesce around new leadership; maybe Sarah Palin '12, or Mike Huckabe '12, or Mitt Romney '12, or Newt Gingrich '12. Impatient of the next presidential race, they may even hope that if Obama is overwhelmed in the early years of his presidency, 2010 could be a repeat of 1994 and the Gingrich Revolution.
The point of this historiography, is simply that McCain will finish dark. The McCain campaign will continue to sew increased seeds of anger, hatred and discontent in order to foment the resentment necessary to keep the tribes together through however many years in the desert. Until some new Moses can lift the staff and bring the Bush Mavericks, the Deadbeats, and the Conservatives without Conscience back to a Washington majority, the right wing promised land, the memory of Goldwater and bald-faced resentment may be the only political force capable of keeping conservatism alive.
Add to these the religious fundamentalists from the latest evangelical awakening in the 80s. Total Republican domination in Washington.
But then people changed. The reality is that people under 50 are a lot less racist than their elders. And even people above 50 are a lot less racist today than they were in the past. Being a racist is a big turned off for many nice, decent people.
Just a few years ago the hate rallies of McCain would have been reported in alternative news sources and the non racist Republicans would have denied that such things existed. And they would have been right because people hang out with people like them, and moderate Republicans would have hanged out with other moderate Republicans.
Now, thanks to youtube, you can show the angry mob that is the new face of Republican Party. And since politics are a lot about identity, people don't want to identify with that.
And here is the irony: the more liberal and moderate Republicans leave the party on account for the radical, angry racist bloc, the more the GOP must rely on them.
What seemed like an expedient and useful addition to the GOP in the late 60s is now finally beginning to hurt them.