It’s becoming obvious that ticket-splitting will be the order of the day in Indiana in 2008.  You can tell driving through some neighborhoods, where you see signs for Barack Obama and Mitch Daniels in the same yard.  And the polls indicate the same thing very clearly.  Obama may not beat John McCain in Indiana. (He was two points behind in the latest poll Tuesday.)  But few will dispute that at the very least he will come at lot closer than any Democrat in recent memory.  And the gubernatorial polls appear to show Daniels pulling away from the underfunded Jill Long Thompson.

  The question is:  Are these basically Democratic voters who are switching sides on the gubernatorial race to vote for Daniels?  Or Republican voters changing sides at the top to vote for Obama?  It’s important, because of the way it affects the down-ticket races, especially the minor state offices and the legislature.  If it’s Obama voters scratching for Daniels, Democrats stand a much better chance of keeping control of the House.  If it’s Republican voters scratching for Obama, Republicans still have a chance to win back the House majority.

  And there’s still the possibility of a third force at work here.  What if Obama supporters who’ve been drawn into this election specifically to vote for him simply fill in the blank by his name and then turn in their ballot without voting for anybody else?  If that happens, Obama could still do very well without helping other Democrats at all.

An update from Republican Ninth District Congressional challenger Mike Sodrel says Sarah Palin is coming to Jeffersonville on Wednesday:

Governor Sarah Palin will be in Jeffersonville this Wednesday evening, October 29 for a rally.

We need 250 volunteers to help with the event. Most likely volunteers will need to be at the venue all day.

The first 250 people to respond by email to sodrel@mikesodrel.com will get a free McCain/Palin/Sodrel T-shirt.

The volunteer spots will fill up quickly so respond ASAP.

More details to follow.

Indiana’s a battleground state, and the best we can rate is a few visits from the running mate? John McCain hasn’t been here since July. What the heck are they thinking?

Republican elected officials and conservative columnists have been throwing John McCain under the bus for the past few weeks. Now comes the in-fighting.

Even as John McCain and Sarah Palin scramble to close the gap in the final days of the 2008 election, stirrings of a Palin insurgency are complicating the campaign’s already-tense internal dynamics.

Four Republicans close to Palin said she has decided increasingly to disregard the advice of the former Bush aides tasked to handle her, creating occasionally tense situations as she travels the country with them. Those Palin supporters, inside the campaign and out, said Palin blames her handlers for a botched rollout and a tarnished public image — even as others in McCain’s camp blame the pick of the relatively inexperienced Alaska governor, and her public performance, for McCain’s decline.

“She’s lost confidence in most of the people on the plane,” said a senior Republican who speaks to Palin, referring to her campaign jet. He said Palin had begun to “go rogue” in some of her public pronouncements and decisions.

“I think she’d like to go more rogue,” he said.

Palin is the epitome of ego wrapped up in designer suits and cutesy phrases. She wants — desperately, obviously wants — to stay on the national stage.

John McCain is almost certainly going to lose this election, which means he has nothing to lose right now. He should let her “go rogue.” Take her handlers away, let her do a Sunday show and go all unscripted on America.

And then, as her poll numbers continue to fall, his advisers should quietly start saying that he made a huge mistake picking someone so untested and unqualified as his running mate. Let her sink by letting her run wild.

Then start rebuilding the party from its fiscal conservative roots. Leave mavericky folksiness at the door. Get back to basics. Start recruiting candidates who don’t just appeal to the right-wing base. McCain could have been that candidate had he thrown Dubya under the bus as soon as he clinched the nomination — and picked a veep candidate with a CV and the intellect to back up an adorable personal story.

But that’s all hindsight. History starts now.

The Indianapolis Star, for the first time in four decades, has chosen not to endorse the Republican presidential nominee.

The Star editorial board deadlocked and instead chose not to endorse a candidate at all.

This isn’t big news for average readers, but in light of other unexpected endorsements — the Chicago Tribune comes to mind — it says a lot about the state of our nation’s political tide.

It also makes it darn hard for the GOP, which loves to trot out the media bias card when its candidates are losing, to say the big, bad liberal press is just pulling out all the stops for Obama.