"I can say with authority that George Bush is the worst president in American history."

By Michael J.W. Stickings

And just who made that statement? Dennis Kucinich? Someone at Kos? Me, perhaps?

No, it was actually Alaska Republican Vic Vickers, who is challenging incumbent U.S. Senator Ted Stevens -- the indicted Ted Stevens, the arrogant, ignorant, corrupt Ted Stevens -- for the Republican nomination.

Yes, it seems that Mr. Vickers, like many Republicans around the country, are actually running against their own party -- and certainly against the president.

As Eve Fairbanks explains, this "American historian" who has "studied every president" (his words) is not your typical Republican: "Vic Vickers is a George-W.-Bush-hating, Exxon-despising, Iraq-War-loathing Republican who wants to 'put an end to the stranglehold that Big Oil' has on Alaska and has an Iraq withdrawal plan -- if the Jordanians and Saudis don't start cutting big checks, you just pack everyone up and come right home."

He's a self-styled "Bull Moose, a Teddy Roosevelt Republican," you see, and that sets him well apart from much of the rest of the GOP. "Pressed to identify a Republican he admires in Alaska besides himself, Vickers could not come up with a single one." Even Governor Sarah Palin, who has "authorized the hunting of wolves by helicopter" and, it seems, the shooting of wolf pups in the head -- "barbaric," according to Vickers, and I agree. And, what's more, one of Vickers's closest allies in Alaska politics is -- gasp! -- a Democrat, Tim June, currently running for the state Senate as a reformer.

And Vickers is not alone:

To establishment Alaska Republicans, Vickers might seem like a peculiarly bad headache, but he's really only part of a larger phenomenon this year: candidates signing up to run on the state or local GOP ticket who then publicly deride the party or pioneer their own esoteric political philosophies. Call them the weakened GOP's opportunistic infections: people like Montana's Bob Kelleher,whose campaign website intially stated he was a member of the Green Party, or North Carolina's Carl Mumpower, who put out a press release calling for Bush's impeachment and, shortly thereafter, put out another release informing the public that angry officials from his own party had kindly requested he "impeach himself."

Of course, these are the exceptions, not the rule. Most Republicans still fall in line behind Bush and remain loyal, well past the point of fault, to their party.

Still, the rise of these anti-Republican Republicans is yet another sign of the deep unpopularity of the Republican Party this year.

If there were ever a good time for the Democrats to capitalize on the problems of their opponents and a political landscape almost entirely in their favour, this is it.