http://crookedtimber.org/2008/10/10/a-bit-of-horserace-commentary/

From the blog post:

A bit of horserace commentary

by Henry on October 10, 2008

So I hear (via a prominent member of the sane Republican faction) that the word on the right side of the street is that the Republican National Committee is about to pull the plug on its joint ads with the McCain campaign, and devote its resources instead to trying to save a couple of the senators who are at serious risk of losing their seats. Now this is gossip, albeit of the high class variety; take it with the requisite pinch of salt. But it points to some real vulnerabilities in the McCain campaign's finances. McCain's decision to opt for public funding has meant that he's had enormous difficulty competing with the Obama money raising machine. He's been able to partly compensate by co-financing ads with the RNC (this skirts the limits of the legislation that he himself co-wrote but is just about legal). This has kept him competitive in TV advertising, albeit still significantly outgunned. But if the Republicans are as worried as they should be about the impending elections, there will be a lot of calls on that money, and the RNC is going to have to make some tough choices. Should it keep spending money on the presidential campaign in the hope that McCain will win despite the polls, or should it instead try to minimize the damage of a McCain defeat by doing its best to stop the Democrats from making big gains in the Senate? Decisions, decisions …
 
 
and another post from the same page:
 
PHB 10.11.08 at 3:53 am

My serious concern is that McCain appears to be inciting his supporters to violence. For the past few days he has been listening to his supporters shout 'traitor' and 'kill him' without comment. When invited to condemn this type of behavior by his supporters his campaign instead attacked Obama for 'attacking McCain'. I know that he did make a comment today, but it is not yet clear whether the change of campaign policy is for the incitement to stop completely or for McCain to stop doing it personally.

That is the sort of behavior I am much more familiar with seeing from Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley. Both owed their positions to the fact that they have supporters who were terrorists. And both would pivot from demands to condemn the extremists on their side to condemn the violence of the other. Between them they caused 3,000 deaths over 30 or so years.

This type of activity is not new in US history either. On the day of his assassination, a Dallas newspaper carried a full page advert with a picture of JFK and the heading 'wanted for treason'. Before the OKC bombing, Gordon Liddy and the right wing hate radio types were talking about 'aiming for the head' when a cop attempts an arrest. If you look through the USENET archives you will find the exchanges I had with Timothy McVeigh before he murdered 200 people there.
Today I had lunch with a friend of Rabin's who told me that the talk from the McCain campaign reminded him of the talk coming from Likud and the Settlers before his murder. Perhaps the McCain campaign believes that they could profit from a similar event.

It is time to put the McCain campaign and his staff that if there is absolutely no possibility of the GOP benefiting in the way that Likud and the Israeli right did. An assassination would not leave the Democrats leaderless as the loss of Rabin did. Nor would McCain be able to escape responsibility for the role that he has played. The GOP is already facing decimation. McCain is now playing with fire that threatens the annihilation of the Republican party.

The NRCC is not the only part of the Republican party that is turning away from McCain. The NRCC would not be making the switch without orders from the White House. It is Bush who raises that money. There are some tactics that offend even Bush it appears.