While it's far from over, there is definitely a chance that the GOP will lose this upcoming election. They might not only lose the presidential election but also lose seats in the House and Senate. It's interesting to see how the party handles these races and whether they acknowledge the brand issues of the GOP or not.
It seems, thus far, they hope that individual candidates can succeed on their own merits and have not tried to mold the party message at all, leaving it focused on the base. What that means for rhetoric leading up to these elections in just over 2 weeks is going to be interesting.
What I've seen as an Independent turned Democrat this year has been extremely polarizing and will certainly be bad for the GOP as a party. From horribly racist mailers, to robo-calls that insinuate that Obama is in league with terrorists, to Michele Bachmann's assertion that liberals are America-haters. How can these efforts do anything other than motivate their base? It seems to be having the opposite effect. It's turning off life-long Republicans from GOP Senator Gordon Smith to Hollywood Republican Dennis Hopper to Bush cabinet member Colin Powell. What it must be doing to the middle-politic of American voters could very well be deadly to the GOP. If this rhetoric keeps up and the GOP base gets angrier and angrier and more and more frustrated, their losses will keep increasing. It sets a precedent for the GOP activist base as to what is allowable to say. When your national candidates repeat the "palling around with terrorists" smear and it enrages the crowds to hatred, you are not only ruining your chances of winning, you are putting country last.
It's surprising, given the down-trending polls regarding negative attack-style ads, that McCain didn't at least engage voters in additional ways. Obama fields his share of attack ads and considering his media spend it ends up being more in quantity than McCain. The problem for McCain is that Obama is at the same time hanging his shingle on Hope, Healthcare, Middle Class Tax Reform, Ending the War, Returning America to its Place in the World... etc. They're capitalized because they are and have been major headline-themes of the Obama campaign. He has advertised and spoken (eloquently as McCain says) about them early and often.
What does McCain hang his shingle on? Bill Ayers? Joe the $250,000 a year Plumber? He seems to have forgotten quality GOP areas like Entitlements vs. block grants, Curbing deficit spending, letting states take care of their own business... who knows their business better than they do? etc.
Of course maybe that's because after a decade of one party rule these are all issues that they feel they have failed on and thus they can no longer talk about. But we really don't know that because they haven't really even tried.