CHARLOTTE HAYS DOES IT ALL. As I frequently tell you, Barack Obama is black and therefore could still lose this election. But if I haven't forgotten it, many of our conservative brethren have, for the moment, anyway. This has got them so flummoxed that some of their writings are like little Rosetta stones of rightwing bullshit, packing much vital information about the tribe and their lingo in a short space.

Take for instance this Charlotte Hays post at National Review. It's got everything! First, the mournful tribute to the Great Bush:

George Bush has probably had the hardest administration since Lincoln. I feel for him.

Then, equally mandatory with wingnuts these days, a swipe at the Great Bush:

But his speech on the economy just now was lackluster.

The enduring faith that spin can conquer all:

Neal Cavuto says he should stay from the cameras for awhile.

(To protect whom, one wonders -- himself, the economy, or the American people.)

McCain, on the other hand, can't afford to be lackluster.

OK, that old dry-drunk's on the slag heap, everyone pump up Maverick!

He has got to make the case that, at a time when some are (optimistically?) proclaiming the end of American capitalism, it would be dangerous to have Bill Ayers's pal reshape the economy.

There's a nice cocktail of rightwing memes: the treasonous Washington Post, by covering doubts about our system, is actually intentionally sowing them, and the last thing America needs with its hyperinflated market thus under siege is somebody whose gigantic circle of acquaintances includes a Weatherman.

McCain has also got to say that we have lots to fear but that fear itself is out of control and a contributing factor.

Following up a dark accusation with a plea to abandon fear is a classic conservative switchback, made more piquant by the idea of John McCain as the man to ease the American people through the New Depression.

He must find a way to call for confidence in America a way that the fear-mongering Obama campaign can't pillory.

Again, it's the socialist, market-crash-causing, Muslim, mad bomber Obama who's mongering the fear, and also pillorying ways of calling for confidence which haven't been discovered yet, but which will be if you remember Bill Ayers is a terrorist.

Tall order, but possible. Maybe.

And that's what you get a lot from them nowadays -- that maudlin, vaguely hopeful but mostly premonitory tone, like the odd moment in Sarah Palin's debate summation when she talked about a day in which, under a totalitarian Democratic regime, Americans would look back with longing on the Freedom That Was. It's straight out of old Goldwater-era pamphlets and John Birch Society parables. In their moment of crisis, conservatives are discovering and uncovering themselves.