It’s not too early for members of the GOP to start blaming each other for Tuesday’s defeat — actually, rivals in McCain and Palin’s camps started weeks before the election — and from the sidelines it’s already making for some entertaining chatter. The very notion that the Alaskan governor could be the next face of the Republican party is sparking an extreme reaction. 

Fox News’ Carl Cameron reported yesterday that people in McCain’s camp swear that Palin did not know which countries are in NAFTA (the whole “North America” part might have tipped her off) or that Africa was a continent and not a country. And this from the people who have labeled the media as snarky and disrespectful in its coverage of McCain’s vice-presidential pick. 

What I’m hoping is that when the cannibals get done feeding on the clowns (“Does this taste funny to you?”) the deeper thinkers in the party will commence to contemplate their future. Some have already spoken of the unholy alliance between born-again, anti-intellectual red-meat reactionaries and the heirs of the “party of ideas” that arguably began with William Buckley. (That Buckley’s son was abandoned by the magazine his father started for having the temerity to endorse Obama — in a Tina Brown-edited, Barry Diller-owned publication no less — was one of the many ironies of conservatism’s collapse.) Do they have a common platform? And what might it look like?

One thing is obvious: it’s going to take more than hate. Simply saying no to whatever Obama and the Democratic congress proposes won’t work, not just because of the majority (not filibuster-proof but compelling enough to get some moderate Republicans to come along on key legislation) but because of the mood of the country. If people were as scared of taxes as Grover Norquist is, they would not have elected a candidate who pretty much guaranteed years of sacrifice, and all but promised financial hardship. 

Americans, it seems, don’t hate government: They hate government that doesn’t work, that abandons its citizens in the wake of natural disasters, and looks the other way when people profit off of man-made ones, whether it be Wall Street or Halliburton. As we return to a belief in our system, and our role in it, the right will have to come up with more than “nope” to counter hope, and try not to get deranged in the face of change. Rush Limbaugh has already vowed to be the voice of all those who did not vote for Obama. You know: losers.  

Did you catch the senator from Arizona’s valedictory remarks on SNL last night? Parodying himself, as Tina Fey stood beside him and parodied Sarah Palin, McCain acted as if his candidacy was washed up and he had to resort to selling “Fine Gold” and other campaign mementoes on QVC. (Using his Stepford wife Cindy as the hand model was a stroke of genius.) This was meant to remind us that he has a sense of humor — and I hope that these are the images of JMC that I’m left with — even as the jokes reminded us of how ill-fitting the GOP mantle has been on this candidate.

“I’m a true maverick,” he said, “a Republican without money.” It reminded me of a day long ago, when I was in college and a friend of mine saw a book I was reading for class, Michael Gold’s Lower-East-Side saga, Jews Without Money.  

“There’s something you don’t see very often,” he cracked — a remark he could get away because he was Jewish and (unlike almost everyone else I knew) had money. But when McCain makes a joke about the stereotype of rich Republicans he reminds us both that a) he is one and b) his party’s appeal to the working class is, at times, a rather cynical one. The popularity of the GOP since Reagan has been based in part on poor people who wanted to get rich (like Reagan, like Trump). But now that even the richest are facing the prospect of becoming poor (or at least middle-class), while the poor are facing the prospect of bubkes, the promise of fine gold rings hollow. As hollow as that stuff they hawk on QVC. 

Of course it’s a modern tradition for the candidates to make fun of themselves in the run-up to the election. The humor-challenged Richard Nixon helped clinch the ’68 election by appearing on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In (his opponent, Hubert Humphrey, declined) and playing off the square he was (“Sock it to me?“) But McCain has a sense of humor, one that has been notably absent in the debates and many of his speeches in recent months.  

But I don’t buy this business about the “real McCain” — you know, the decent honorable guy that his friends are all awaiting the return of. As long as we’re talking TV here, it occurred to me watching the season finale of Mad Men last week that what linked this show to the last one Matthew Weiner labored on, The Sopranos, was that its characters were defined by their actions. They could talk funny or cynical or earnest or awful but it was how they acted when everything was on the line that mattered. 

No one made John McCain choose Sarah Palin. No one forced him to bring up such non-starters as William Ayers & Acorn, hoping to scare voters. No one told him to question Obama’s patriotism. And I’m sure no one dragged him back to Rockefeller Center either; his better angel has a sense of humor but has to be put in the line-up with all those demons when the time comes to weigh him as a presidential pick. Sock it to him.