Financial Times reporter Edward Luce has found another sign of trouble for the McCain campaign: he's turning up the noses of the "cocktail party circuit" inside Washington, D.C., which is "swelling with disaffected Republicans."

I kid you not.

From Luce's page 4 October 24 article, "McCain's troubles highlight party rift":

The more trouble John McCain's campaign encounters, the more it highlights the cultural divide between the "real America" the Republican candidate says he represents and the Washington "cocktail party circuit" that largely disdains it.

That circuit is swelling with disaffected Republicans. Some complain about Mr McCain's selection of Sarah Palin, whose appeal to "Joe Six-Pack" may have been dented by revelations this week that she has spent more than $150,000 (€117,000, £93,000) of other people's money on her wardrobe. Others are upset at the negative tone of the campaign.

"Obama art is not for mere mortals" reads the headline to Financial Times reporter Edward Luce's August 26 Denver Diary item. Luce described a shrine fit for pilgrimage by the likes of Chris Matthews or Lee Cowan, the so-called Manifest Hope gallery in Denver.:

The gallery, a few blocks from the convention centre, asked artists for their take on "unity, hope, patriotism, change and progress" and within two weeks it had received 1,500 submissions.

Among the icons of the Obamessiah one depicts the Illinois senator "bare-chested as he strides out of a rose-strewn ocean."

Luce concluded his squib by offering "[t]wo bits of advice for curators":

admit only the converted and conceal it from the candidate until the end of his second term. No mortal can survive this adulation.

"Three prominent Republicans declare their support for Obama" insisted the August 13 Financial Times front page headline. But who are these "prominent" GOPers that have gone Obamacan? Staffer Edward Luce pointed to two left-of-center Republicans ousted in the 2006 mid-terms and one Rita Hauser, who is no stranger to supporting Democrats for president:

Barack Obama won the endorsement yesterday of three prominent Republicans, including Jim Leach and Lincoln Chafee, both of whom lost their congressional seats to Democratic opponents in the 2006 mid-term elections.

[...]

The three, who include Rita Hauser, a former White House intelligence adviser, stressed foreign policy as their principal motivation and alarm at what Ms Hauser described as the Republican nominee's "bellicose" stance on Russia's conflict with Georgia.