SUNDAY ROUNDUP

The talk about rifts within the Republican Party over Barack Obama and the current election baffle a couple of conservative bloggers. But other bloggers said that such a schism on the right is inevitable. Obama picked up Sunday the endorsement of the biggest newspaper in Alaska, the home state of GOP veep nominee Sarah Palin, surprised bloggers note.

Obama, a “hardened ideologue,” has used his allure as a “charismatic demagogue” to ensnare conservatives and former Ronald Reagan backers Ken Adelman and Doug Kmiec and centrist Republicans Colin Powell and Charles Fried, according to The Corner’s Mark Levin. Obama’s campaign is built on “class warfare and human envy” and seeks to impose on the freedom of the individual, a worried Levin writes. While New York Times’ columnist David Brooks decries a Republican shift away from the centrist, “national greatness” politics espoused by Alexander Hamilton and Abraham Lincoln, Robert Stacy McCain writes that no such GOP strain ever existed and suggests that Republicans should instead just focus on their limited government principles.

But, according to DaveG at Race 4 2008, Republicans need to undergo an internal war after the election to figure out how to adapt to a new age, just like conservatives under Ronald Reagan and Britain’s Margaret Thatcher did before their rise in the 1980s. The Republicans’ troubles and their tendency to stick with an out-of-touch establishment reminds kos of the Democrats in 2004, when they lost with a staid candidate, Sen. John Kerry (Mass.). kos argues that the Republican Party needs to elect as chairman its own version of Howard Dean, someone who can shake things up, and the best candidate to do that is former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R).

The Anchorage Daily News, Alaska’s most influential newspaper, backed Obama partly because it had concerns over the judgment of John McCain, seen in picking a less-than-ready Gov. Palin, writes Amy Chozick at Washington Wire. The endorsement stings because Palin is such a popular governor in her state, writes Donkelephant’s Justin Gardner.

FROM THE BLOGS:
The Obama Temptation – Mark Levin, The Corner
National Greatness Redux – Robert Stacy McCain, Other McCain
Schism – DaveG, Race 4 2008
The Right’s Howard Dean – kos, Daily Kos
GOP Preps for Civil War – Oliver Willis
Anchorage Daily News Endorses Obama – A. Chozick, Wash. Wire
ADN Endorsement: This One Really Stings – J. Gardner, Donkelephant
ADN Endorsement: Palin ‘Too Risky’ – Joe Sudbay, AMERICAblog

OTHER NEWS SOURCES:
Election’s Endgame Is No Sure Thing – Los Angeles Times
Campaign Finance Gets New Scrutiny – Washington Post
Despite Polls, McCain Says Race Will Be Tight – The Hill