But I'm fairly sure you couldn't achieve something this good on purpose

Regular readers of this blog will by now be aware that I am a devoted fan of Guy Rundle's daily reports back to crikey.com.au on the progress of the US election campaign and today is no exception. But today there has also been a magnificent bonus. Either Guy was typing too fast, and/or the spell-checker did its evil thing, and/or someone at crikey missed it, and/or it is a genuine error on someone's part, but whatever it is it has cheered me up mightily. 'But man,' says Guy this afternoon,

the McCain/Palin thing is now officially in deep sh-t. The conservatives who have now come out against her include Charles Krauthammer (uber neocon), David Frum (Bush speechwriter), most of the National Review, and most recently George Will, a true conservative elder. But the death-blow went to middle-of-the-road, okay liberal, Fareed Zakharia, who pointed out that it was not that Palin couldn't answer very well in interviews, it was that "she clearly didn't understand the questions. This is a level of incompetence we have not seen before".

Indeed, and that all makes Thursday's VP debate just about the most important in history. If Palin can somehow hold her own and be effective, then it will be one of the most stunning turnarounds in history, and the whole anti-elitist thing will be retched up, like, a billion notches.

I think he meant 'ratcheted'.

Or maybe not.