Glenn Greenwood has a good run down of the polls in his The Right and mainstream America: a universe apart post over at Salon

... it's not McCain that some people are finding so alarming. Rather, it's the values, beliefs and behaviour of some of their fellow Americans.'

Count me out of the 'some people'. It's completely unsurprising that Obama has flushed out the US equivalent of Pauline Hanson's One Nation in all their malignant ignorance.

The person I find alarming is John McCain: an unstable, deranged, unintelligent man who is in love with his own righteousness, convinced of his mission to rule and absolutely committed to using coercion as the first response to any and every international obstacle.

Have just arrived from the "
Age" where I was reading about Palin's downfall and then an article which at first appears to have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with above.
This is an article by an academic David MacNight, about Exxon in strife with its own shareholder including members of the Rockefella family over climate change denial funding, including the attitude that science and dicoveries like climate change, are a leftist plot "political orthodoxy" rather than an objective discipline and relates indirectly to the crackpot Lavoisier group and (Wikipedia) Jennifer Marohasy, a local think tank patholog cloned out of Albrechtsen and Devine .
Putting it together the connection is the culturally or pathologically imposed lack of consciousness and self reflexivity of the Right; a dominant pathology of denial, control and emotive nastiness that involves the INABILITY thru internal utter suppression, to recognise and admit reality and truth when it bites a subject in the face, that is exactly what Kathy G is likely worried about.
And what better example of the mentality than Palin, in light of Troopergate!

Gary, if it's true that poll results influence people's opinions that's a terrible bunch of numbers. And because this has been such a controversial part of the campaign I imagine it's all getting a decent run in US media. An interesting few weeks ahead.

Yeah, Ken, well there's that too I guess. Everything I know about McCain I've learned since the Obama/McCain face off started and I see very little of the decent bloke with his heart in the right place people keep saying he used to be.

Paul,
it sure looks as if McCain has let the Bush-Cheney operatives who took over his Republican presidential campaign talk him into running a scorched-earth campaign attacking Barack Obama. That campaign is now fully operational.

McCain appears to be shocked and unsettled by the anger and hostility he is hearing from his own base--Obama is an Arab, a Muslim and a terrorist; and whose popularity is responsible for the systematic crisis of the financial system. All the wingnut part of the base wants to hear is trash talk that smears Obama at every turn,

McCain has a problem with credibility ie.,

is he McCain is the hard-right conservative his associations suggest, or the independent maverick of all of his speeches; whether he's the conservative who kowtowed to the culturally conservative, free market base of his own party in the Republican primaries, or the pragmatist who endorsed a massive government intervention as soon as he was handed the nomination. Is this the McCain who said he would run a principled campaign and then took a hard right turn into the mud? Or is this the McCain who says walk softly and carry a big stick, but loudly counsels war with any number of states at a time when our military has been stretched to the breaking point by our conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq?

paul,
the conservative Republican fear and anger this year looks to be s so much harsher than it was when Gore or Kerry was running. The difference is race. A significant minority of the right-wing base are watching a black man with a Muslim-sounding name close this election, and they are not happy about it at all. They do not want a black president

Lyn,
McCain's image or brand as an honorable, straight-talker, partisan-mediator, maverick image is sure taking a battering. He's allowed himself to be associated with the dirt and mud throwing--eg., Obama the terrorist

There are good reasons why McCain's taken the turn to the hard Republican right --its the logic of the situation he finds himself in.

"There are good reasons why McCain's taken the turn to the hard Republican right --its the logic of the situation he finds himself in."

If the situation he finds himself in is one where their internal polling tells them they're doomed and it's time to adopt a firewall strategy to avoid annihilation, then yes, I can see the logic. I don't see the need to be so extreme about it.

As you say, McCain appears to be shocked at the reaction he's getting, but when you consider that none of this is accidental you have to figure 'appears to be' is where the emphasis should be.

They've been campaigning against Hussein Obama and Hussein Osama and other such nonsense. If McCain's surprised at the response I'm a monkey's uncle.

saw some footage from a mccain rally where a lady in the audience was claiming tha Obama was 'an Arab'. Understandably, Mccain snatched the mic away before she could finish BUT he said: "no ma'am, no ma'am. he is a decent human being....". interesting....does that mean that Arabs cannot be decent human beings?

Lyn,
The logic of his situation is that he has to turn to the right in order to sure up his base, which doesn't trust him. he has to live with a Republican platform----eg.,on abortion, immigration----that he disagrees with.

Luke,
as New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd pointed out recently, McCain is essentially the arsonist who helps set a fire in someone's house and then tries to take credit for keeping it under control, if not putting it out.

Lyn
Michael Tomasky in the Guardian says that:

McCain's campaign is now at the point – seven, eight points behind with just three weeks remaining; also, unsure of its message and direction – where the political pros in the party start making choices. They look at the amount of money the party is bringing in. They look at the state of McCain's campaign and start making sober calculations about the chance of his winning.

With fewer resources at their disposal than the Obama campaign, the Republicans are going to have to start making choices soon about what to defend.

Nan, it looks to me as though they made that choice when they decided to track into wingnut territory. The campaign has been sticking with safe territory geographically and culturally, defending its patch. It looks as though they know they're gone.

As Cam's purple pie cloud shows, their support base is broke people. Appealing to that base cruels their fundraising.