I've received two e-mail messages tonight on several different addresses -- one trying to connect Tom Coburn with an extremist group, the other containing a Shockwave animation encouraging the reader to visualize a Kerry victory on November 2. Earlier I got spam from disgraced Democrat and former Gov. David Walters encouraging me to support Carson, in which Walters claimed that his progressive policies are why he only won one of his three statewide races.

And so Little Boy Brad Carson's smear campaign continues -- on the radio, on the phones, on TV, and now in e-mail. I know there are "ends justify the means" types in the Republican Party, but they're on the fringes and they have the disrespect of elected party officials and grass-roots volunteers. On the other hand, the "win at all costs" mentality seems to have captured the heart and soul of the Democrat Party.

REVJAB thinks the Democrat Party has all the marks of a cult (hat tip: TulipGirl):

Truth to tell, the contemporary Democratic Party has become a gathering-place for all sorts of conspiracy-theories, esoteric quasi-religious devotees, insurrectionists, and con-men. Consider its cult-like characteristics:

* Blind, amoral devotion to a leader that completely disregards and/or excuses the sexual, financial, and ethical evils of the leader(s).
* An apocalyptic intensity fired by a worldview -- more or less Marxist -- that sees everything as a titanic battle between the forces of Repression (Christianity, constitutionalism, heterosexuality, monogamy, and property-rights) versus the forces of Liberation (them).
* An all-out selling of soul to ends-justify-the-means, operationally married to "ethics" only when and if it has some helpful persuasive PR effect.
* An underlying anti-God-ism, taking various forms -- materialistic atheism on one extreme, and variety popsicles of animism/polytheism/pantheism/gnosticism on the other, with evolutionism as a common bridge between the two groups.

I don't think this is so characteristic of most grassroots Oklahoma Ds, like the folks I met walking for City Councilor Roscoe Turner, but it seems to fit the activists that now dominate the party machinery.