Forty years ago, Richard Nixon made a remarkable marketing discovery. By exploiting America’s divisions  divisions over Vietnam, divisions over cultural change and, above all, racial divisions  he was able to reinvent the Republican brand. The party of plutocrats was repackaged as the party of the “silent majority,” the regular guys  white guys, it went without saying  who didn’t like the social changes taking place.

It was a winning formula. And the great thing was that the new packaging didn’t require any change in the product’s actual contents  in fact, the G.O.P. was able to keep winning elections even as its actual policies became more pro-plutocrat, and less favorable to working Americans, than ever.

John McCain’s strategy, in this final stretch, is based on the belief that the old formula still has life in it.

Thus we have Sarah Palin expressing her joy at visiting the “pro-America” parts of the country  yep, we’re all traitors here in central New Jersey. Meanwhile we’ve got Mr. McCain making Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, a k a Joe the Plumber  who had confronted Barack Obama on the campaign trail, alleging that the Democratic candidate would raise his taxes  the centerpiece of his attack on Mr. Obama’s economic proposals.