Andrew Sullivan rarely has anything useful to add to the public discourse. We’re eagerly awaiting his swan song article, when he announces that he is retiring from public writing, and we would happily chip in with a modest honorarium to hurry along that day.

But he has an article in today’s Times – no, not that one, the good one in the UK, and it’s the usual collection of faulty logic, poor grammar and spelling, misplaced assumptions, unfortunate metaphors, and ridiculous observations as he tries to explain “the colonies” to his countrymen. Normally we wouldn’t bother, but the title just struck us as somehow….. appropriate.

The backwoods folk are beginning to doubt Bush

On the eve of an election it is the usually disciplined, on-message, obedient Republican party that is at war with itself.

The polls don’t help. They suggest an imminent drubbing, and the newspapers and blogosphere have been full of what are termed “pre-mortems” or “precriminations”[sic]. When a ship looks like it’s sinking, it gets harder to enforce discipline. But the Republicans are coming to terms with the fact that their very success in expanding their party over the past two decades, compounded by the pressure of what appears an all but lost Iraq war, has led to fractures they can no longer paper over.

I’ve been traveling [sic] across America these past two weeks to battleground states like Pennsylvania and Ohio, as well as Illinois, Wisconsin and California. The anger at Congress is palpable. But what’s most striking is where it’s coming from: not so much from Democrats as from restless conservatives and Republicans.

We’re surprised Andrew hasn’t discussed the R’s big problem – hypocrisy about crime, laws, and teh gay thing. But still, we are happy that he’s finally gotten out of the elite, latte-sipping, Volvo-driving Eastern enclaves he normally inhabits.

We suppose he’s unknown in the “backwoods” where they would surely have ridden him out of town on a rail if they had recognized him.

Most critically, it is the rural heartland that is beginning to question Bush and the war. First, they trusted him as a man of God. Then they blamed the media for distorting reality in Iraq. Then their patriotism kicked in as the president urged them to “stay the course”. But now this segment of the population, people who have disproportionately sent their sons and daughters to fight in the bloodsoaked streets of Ramadi and Falluja and Baghdad, show signs of revolt. If Bush loses these voters — or if they are too demoralised to vote at all — the omens are truly dark for the Republicans.

The party’s strategy, after all, has long been not to persuade moderate, suburban America, but to register, organise and mobilise millions of rural evangelical voters who had not voted in large numbers since the 1920s.

Issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage brought these voters to the polls and made the difference. Without them in Ohio in 2004, John Kerry would now be president. The Republicans also gerrymandered their constituencies to ensure these voters were spread around enough to provide narrow margins of victories across the country. The victories were always close ones, nonetheless.

Andrew’s right about the evangelicals, of course, but quite wrong about Ohio, 2004. The Republican win there was due to having Ken Blackwell as Secretary of State. It’s true – you could look it up.

There’s much more, and we would encourage you to read the entire article. It’s surely one Andrew could have written from the front porch of his “cottage” in Provincetown, and saved himself the trip. If nothing else, Andrew is master of the obvious.