Compare that to the latest iteration of our quadrennial reality show "Who Wants to Run the Largest State in the Union?" It looked, from the previews, like a fascinating contest. Unable to match Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's flash, Democrats would overwhelm him with substance in the form of state Treasurer Phil Angelides. Nerd vs. Jock - it would be high school all over again.

Angelides is a wonk's wonk, a gangly, earnest lefty who pioneered the investment of state pension funds in inner-city development and socially responsible companies. In a Democratic Party attempting to acclimate to an age of concentrated wealth and mega-corporations, he seemed likely to be one of the pols creating a new paradigm for responsible populism.

By midseason, however, it was clear something had gone terribly wrong. Unable to attract attention for anything positive or inspiring, Angelides has fallen back on a steady stream of ineffectual but ugly attacks on Schwarzenegger. His website features a photo of Schwarzenegger lounging around with Vice President Dick Cheney. And now there's the frenzy over whether his campaign hacked into the governor's computers to access an audio file of Schwarzenegger musing that a combination of black and Latino blood accounts for Cathedral City Republican Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia's "hot" personality.

Evidence for this change in the republican [sic] coalition came with the release of the 2005 Pew Typology Survey, a comprehensive polling project conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. Pew’s political typology studies, conducted in 1987, 1994, 1999, and 2005, sort the electorate into homogenous groups based on values, political beliefs, and party affiliation. The trends are telling: In 1987 and 1994, the Republican Party relied on two groups, Moralists and Enterprisers, the former emphasizing social conservatism, the latter small-government conservatism.

But the 1999 study noticed the emergence of a surprising third group: Populist Republicans. These are low-income and economically insecure Republicans who favor strong government regulation, entitlement aid, and moral enforcement; are largely centered in the South; and attend church regularly. By 2005, this group had solidified into Pro-Government Conservatives, and proven itself more than a momentary statistical artifact. Fully 80 percent of Pro-Government Conservatives believe the government must do more to help the needy, even if it means going into debt. More than 60 percent believe that environmental regulations are worth the cost, 83 percent fear the power corporations have amassed, and 66 percent believe government regulation is necessary to protect the public interest. Most tellingly, only 29 percent report that “paying the bills is not generally a problem,” as opposed to 88 percent of the Social Conservatives (the updated name the study gave the Moralists) and Enterprisers. That financial insecurity, more so than anything else, may explain their unwillingness to see the safety net shredded. ...

The Democrats may also gain from the shifting interests of a second group: Social Conservatives. While distinct for the typology’s purposes, these voters share the Pro-Government Conservatives’ beliefs about regulation and corporate power, with 88 percent fearing Big Business’s influence and 58 percent agreeing that regulation is necessary to safeguard the public interest. And large majorities of both Pro-Government Conservatives and Social Conservatives support the government guaranteeing health care (even if it requires raising taxes), raising the minimum wage, and repealing either all or some of the Bush tax cuts. Many of these voters are recent recruits to the GOP, absorbed during the Southern realignment of the past 40 years, during which once-monolithic Democratic control of all levels of government has ceded to a reality in which more than 50 percent of state houses, 60 percent of governor’s mansions, 90 percent of the South’s senators, and more than 60 percent of their counterparts in the House.

These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog, Fala. Well, of course, I don't resent attacks, and my family doesn't resent attacks, but Fala does resent them. You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scottie, as soon as he learned that the Republican fiction writers in Congress and out had concocted a story that I had left him behind on the Aleutian Islands and had sent a destroyer back to find him - at a cost to the taxpayers of two or three, or eight or twenty million dollars- his Scotch soul was furious. He has not been the same dog since. I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself - such as that old, worm-eaten chestnut that I have represented myself as indispensable. But I think I have a right to resent, to object to libelous statements about my dog.

We all know that certain people who make it a practice to depreciate the accomplishments of labor — who even attack labor as unpatriotic — they keep this up usually for three years and six months in a row. But then, for some strange reason they change their tune - every four years - just before election day. When votes are at stake, they suddenly discover that they really love labor and that they are anxious to protect labor from its old friends.

I got quite a laugh, for example - and I am sure that you did — when I read this plank in the Republican platform adopted at their National Convention in Chicago last July:

"The Republican Party accepts the purposes of the National Labor Relations Act, the Wage and Hour Act, the Social Security Act and all other Federal statutes designed to promote and protect the welfare of American working men and women, and we promise a fair and just administration of these laws."

You know, many of the Republican leaders and Congressmen and candidates, who shouted enthusiastic approval of that plank in that Convention Hall would not even recognize these progressive laws if they met them in broad daylight. Indeed, they have personally spent years of effort and energy-and much money - in fighting every one of those laws in the Congress, and in the press, and in the courts, ever since this Administration began to advocate them and enact them into legislation. That is a fair example of their insincerity and of their inconsistency.

The whole purpose of Republican oratory these days seems to be to switch labels. The object is to persuade the American people that the Democratic Party was responsible for the 1929 crash and the depression, and that the Republican Party was responsible for all social progress under the New Deal.

Now, imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery - but I am afraid that in this case it is the most obvious common or garden variety of fraud.

Of course, it is perfectly true that there are enlightened, liberal elements in the Republican Party [1944 was a long time ago!], and they have fought hard and honorably to bring the Party up to date and to get it in step with the forward march of American progress. But these liberal elements were not able to drive the Old Guard Republicans from their entrenched positions.

Can the Old Guard pass itself off as the New Deal?

I think not.

We have all seen many marvelous stunts in the circus but no performing elephant could turn a hand-spring without falling flat on his back. (my emphasis)

The opposition in this year has already imported into this campaign a very interesting thing, because it is foreign. They have imported the propaganda technique invented by the dictators abroad. Remember, a number of years ago, there was a book, Mein Kampf, written by Hitler himself. The technique was all set out in Hitler's book - and it was copied by the aggressors of Italy and Japan. According to that technique, you should never use a small falsehood; always a big one, for its very fantastic nature would make it more credible - if only you keep repeating it over and over and over again. (my emphasis)

But perhaps the most ridiculous of these campaign falsifications is the one that this Administration failed to prepare for the war that was coming. I doubt whether even Goebbels would have tried that one. For even he would never have dared hope that the voters of America had already forgotten that many of the Republican leaders in the Congress and outside the Congress tried to thwart and block nearly every attempt that this Administration made to warn our people and to arm our Nation. Some of them called our 50,000 airplane program fantastic. Many of those very same leaders who fought every defense measure that we proposed are still in control of the Republican party - look at their names— were in control of its National Convention in Chicago, and would be in control of the machinery of the Congress and of the Republican party, in the event of a Republican victory this fall. (my emphasis)