Flash! "October remains the month for political surprises."

Traditionally though the October Surprise was spoken of as a singular event:"Hey--remember when that guy in the seriously redorkulated duck-billed platypus hat leaked Dubya's drunk driving arrest shortly before the 2000 election?" Or the 2003 hit on Arnold Schwarzenegger by the L.A. Times, in which the paper, as James Taranto put it, accused Schwarzenegger of behaving on film sets like Gray Davis supporter Bill Clinton?

As I wrote in November of 2004 though, the Internet seemed to have accelerated both the pace of the news cycle and the sheer number of October surprises:

By the time Halloween rolled around, it felt like daily October surprises: NYTrogate last Monday (and Tuesday, and Wednesday and...); Al Jazeera pulling Osama out of a hat on Friday, 60 Minutes' oldie-but-a-goodie body armor story on Sunday, and I think the Times had some sort of other anti-Bush story on Monday. (The bogus early returns Tuesday afternoon was the final October surprise. But that's a whole other post, as this one is going into extra innings.)

And that was on top of RatherGate, a CBS dirty play that fortunately went awry thanks to a bunch of guys in their umm, pajamas.

Back in 2006, in the wake of multiple hits such as the Washington Post-ginned up Macaca scandal and the Mark Foley scandal, Jim Geraghty wrote:

Could there ever be a better time for the reassuring reappearance of the man who has been in Republican circles longer than I've been alive?

Ladies and gentlemen, my longtime sage source and mentor, Obi Wan Kenobi.

Obi gets straight to the point about the Foley scandal, breaking in the final weeks of the campaign.

"At some point, some Republican is going to come out and say, 'Hey. We've seen this show before, every cycle for the past couple of cycles. Starting in September, there's a bombshell every two or three days for the last six weeks of the campaign, from the AP, from the big three networks, from the New York Times and the Post and Bob Woodward, and it's always in one direction. It's always a bombshell of bad news for the Republicans.'"

Obi doesn't list them, but a right-leaning voter can remember - the infamous fake memos used by Dan Rather, the New York Times' brouhaha over the al-Qaqaa weapons depot, the L.A. Times' story slamming Schwarzenegger, the Bush DUI...

Obi wonders if the voting public is getting inoculated; that late-breaking revelations of scandals about Republicans are becoming too transparent to move voters; that they see these stories as a sympathetic media hawking the wares of the Democrats.

This would be a very timely moment for McCain to do something--for example, a YouTube clip or TV commercial highlighting previous late hits, and let his supporters know that, if the pace of 2004 was any indication, near daily hits will be coming (and already have on his veep nominee). Which would then allow him to say, when the bombs start to drop from the Obama campaign and the media (sorry for the repetition), "You see my friends, I told you this would be starting, just as it does every election cycle." And then, when questioned by the media, simply reply, "Hey, you guys do this to Republicans every four years. Such as..." McCain then fires off the list and adds, "Why should this election be any different?"

But he probably won't. In any case, fasten your seat belts--October's going to be one very bumpy ride.