Here’s a summary of the smartest new political analysis on the Web:
by Gerald F. Seib and Sara Murray

The blame game is beginning among Republicans, even as Sen. John McCain struggles to catch up in the polls in the campaign’s final days, report a trio of top Politico writers. Jonathan Martin, Mike Allen, John F. Harris write: “With despair rising even among many of John McCain’s own advisors, influential Republicans inside and outside his campaign are engaged in an intense round of blame-casting and rear-covering—-much of it virtually conceding that an Election Day rout is likely.” McCain himself participated in an interview with the Washington Times, complaining about the problems created by the Bush administration. Beyond that, “the candidate’s strategists in recent days have become increasingly vocal in interviews and conference calls about what they call unfair news media coverage and Barack Obama’s wide financial advantage — both complaints laying down a post-election storyline for why their own efforts proved ineffectual…Top Republican officials have let it be known they are distressed about McCain’s organization.” And there’s a debate about why McCain chose a “reform” rather than an “experience” message.

The Washington Post’s E. J. Dionne Jr. also notes the Republican infighting, writing “here’s what’s revealing about how divided they are: The critics of John McCain and the critics of Sarah Palin represent entirely different camps. One set of critics, skeptical social conservatives, are precisely the people McCain was trying to mollify by picking Palin as his running mate…That McCain felt a need to make such an outlandishly risky choice speaks to how insecure his hold was on the core Republican vote. A candidate is supposed to rally the base during the primaries and reach out to the middle at election time. McCain got it backward, and it’s hurting him.” Palin’s favorability among independents has taken a plunge, meaning all her help energizing the conservative base has been offset by losing the middle ground folks.

As for the pro-Palin conservatives, they’re “still impatient with McCain for not being tough enough — as if he has not run one of the most negative campaigns in recent history. This camp believes that if McCain only shouted the names ‘Bill Ayers’ and ‘Jeremiah Wright’ at the top of his lungs, the whole election would turn around.” So, Dionne concludes, “There is no unified ‘right’ or ‘center-right,’ which is why we are no longer a conservative country, if we ever were. Conservatism has finally crashed on problems for which its doctrines offered no solutions (the economic crisis foremost among them, thus Bush’s apostasy) and on its refusal to acknowledge that the ‘real America’ is more diverse, pragmatic and culturally moderate than the place described in Palin’s speeches or imagined by the right-wing talk show hosts.”