Moments away from boarding Peter Welch’s Magic Bus to New Hampshire, VDB pauses to bring you this sobering campaign update: Sarah Palin, attributing her sinking poll numbers to mismanagement by McCain operatives, has made the semi-covert decision to “go rogue” in the last few days. And according to a Senior Strategist, the best is yet to come. “I think she’d like to go more rogue,” he said. Thank you, God. Forget VDB’s past heresies. You the Deity.

For those of us who’ve thought all along that John McCain was the New Bob Dole, there have been a series of comforting echoes. Dole famously toppled off a stage in Chico, California, providing the ideal metaphor for a candidate about to collapse. For his part, McCain recently fleshed out the meme of a candidate trapped in the past by addressing his fellow citizens as “my fellow prisoners.”