Actually, in this case I mostly agree with him (Ross Douthat) when he opines, self-mockingly since it seems so obvious, that “Rudy is toast.” He’s probably been toast for a while but the success of McCain in SC put an extra level of brown crunch on the sour dough.
Still I wanted to use that headline… more fun… because there’s one area where Ross and I don’t agree. He thinks the Republican side is evolving into a two-man race between Romney and McCain. I think it’s gone further than that. Effectively, McCain has won. And, ironically, that is the worst nightmare for the Democrats and a fair number of Republicans. We Independents just laugh.
Meanwhile, Josh Marshall is suffering from FoM. Can’t say I blame him because he suspects what most of us do – that the most appealing figures in American politics today to the public (not to the pundits and the party regulars) are the politicians who don’t play by party rules.