"I'm melting....melting....help me, I'm melting...."

We've predicted since last fall that 2008 would see another Republican Fears & Queers Campaign. Now New York Times columnist Frank Rich confirms the prediction, though with a caveat:

Among the only durable legacies of the Bush presidency are the twin fears that Mr. Rove relentlessly pushed on his client’s behalf: fear of terrorism and fear of gays. But these pillars are disintegrating too. They’re propped up mainly by political operatives like Mr. Black and their journalistic camp followers — the last Washington insiders who are still in Mr. Rove’s sway and are still refighting the last political war.

Rich's idea is more than amply supported by the latest Vanity Fair comment by James Wolcott- the new century's H.L. Mencken, in our book- describing the "mancrush" the press has on John McCain, and that various and sundry other politicos and celebrities have on each other (It's a long way from Rock Hudson playing a straight actor, eh?).

Rich figures if there is another attack on the US between now and election day, voters have had enough revelations of the cronyism, corruption and incompetence of the party that led the drumbeat for two wars at the price of one (with rustlings of a third heard, ominously, in the wings, even as the Act 3 curtain nears). They've seen the rationales for war ratchet up like the "Now Serving" sign at the drivers license bureau. They remember Katrina. They see the flooding in the Midwest and the President standing at its edge looking, well, the way he does. Anyone who's flown in the last six years knows who the government has transported the Village Idiots' Convention in Love and Death to America and put it in charge of harassing people who just want to get on a plane and be treated like crap on it for a few hours; the tax-paid foreplay is a bonus. Most of the container traffic into the US- the best way, we're told, to import a dirty bomb into a major city- goes uninspected, but the former president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, a 90 year-old who needs help walking, was on a terrorist watch list until this week, while butchers like the dictator of Pakistan are received in state at the White House.

It's all a bit topsy-turvy, Rich suggests, and he concludes, rightly, that while voters may be guilty of giving their government too much benefit of the doubt in times of crisis, they aren't fools.

Similarly, he offers, the GOP's biennial gay panic may have exceeded its sell-by date:

The other Rove fear card is even more tattered. In the wake of Larry Craig and Mark Foley , it’s a double-edged sword for the G.O.P. to trot out gay blades cavorting in pride parades in homosexual-panic ads.

Some on the right still hold out hope otherwise. After the California Supreme Court’s decision on same-sex marriage, The Weekly Standard suggested that a brewing backlash could put that state’s “electoral votes in play.” But few others believe so, including the state’s Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has vowed to enforce the law and opposes a ballot initiative to overturn it. Even Bill O’Reilly recently chastised a family-values advocate for mounting politically ineffectual arguments against same-sex marriage.

Mr. McCain is trying to swing both ways. While he no longer refers to the aging old-guard cranks of the religious right as “agents of intolerance,” his actions, starting with his tardy disowning of the endorsement he sought from the intolerant Rev. John Hagee, sometimes speak as loudly as his past words.

The Ohio operative behind that state’s 2004 anti-same-sex marriage campaign was so alienated by Mr. McCain’s emissaries this year that he told The Los Angeles Times, “He doesn’t want to associate with us, and we don’t want to associate with him.” Mr. McCain instead associated himself with Ellen DeGeneres. He visited her talk show to extend his good wishes for her forthcoming California nuptials while seeming almost chagrined to admit his opposition to same-sex marriage, a stand he shares with Mr. Obama. Since then, Mr. McCain has met with the gay Log Cabin Republicans [well, actually, just one: their chair. And it was a "personal", off the calendar meeting].

He and Mr. Obama also share the antipathy of James Dobson, the Focus on the Family fulminator so avidly courted by the Bush White House. Perhaps best remembered for linking the cartoon character SquareBob SpongePants to a “pro-homosexual video,” Mr. Dobson last week used the word “fruitcake” in a rant against Mr. Obama. He has been nearly as dyspeptic, if not quite as “fruit”-fixated, about Mr. McCain.

Mr. Dobson’s embarrassing lashing out is the last gasp of an era. His dying breed of family-values scold is giving way to a new and independent generation of evangelical leaders (and voters) who don’t march to the partisan beat of Mr. Rove or his one-time ally, the disgraced Ralph Reed.

So now, Rich concludes, the Rovians play a new, if shopworn card: did we mention that Obama and his wife are black?