You have to wonder, is the Republican "batshit crazy" approach what voters really want?
I think most of us here are rational people who wish to evaluate our political situation and its possible solutions in terms of reasonable logical arguments. That is why we gravitate to Obama, the cool reasonable candidate. The problem is, we may not represent the way the majority of voters make decisions on candidates, and hence our ideas of how Obama should approach the next few weeks could be seriously flawed.
It's hard not to view the poll results of peoples political views of the candidates in this Presidential election without being slack jawed at the degree to which a reality distortion has taken hold. Some of the responses I see to specific questions of candidates positions lead me to doubt that "reason" is a major factor at all in this election cycle.
In fact, it seems to me that "reason" among other scientific ideals, has been a more comforting factor than it deserves to be. I sometimes wonder if we aren't entering a new paradigm of thinking, one which George Soros describes as being a period where "reality" is easier to construct, independent of fact than it was at previous points in history and hence serious and prolonged periods of distortion occur with enormous and unpredictable consequences.
I don't have any solutions to offer here, I'm just very perplexed by what I see and marvel at how easily the Republicans have manipulated emotion to their benefit. Perhaps Obama needs to do a little of the same.