Kathleen Parker as Maureen Dowd

So-called conservative columnist Kathleen Parker really has gone off the deep end.

She has morphed into Maureen Dowd.

Her column, "Something About Sarah," is so weird.

All the psychobabble garbage that she uses is reminiscent of Dowd's bizarre style.

Parker's column is downright creepy. She has allowed her personal dislike for Sarah Palin to cloud her judgment.

She writes:

My husband called it first. Then, a brilliant 75-year-old scholar and raconteur confessed to me over wine: "I'm sexually attracted to her. I don't care that she knows nothing."

Finally, writer Robert Draper closed the file on the Sarah Palin mystery with a devastating article in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine: "The Making (and Remaking) of McCain."

McCain didn't know her. He didn't vet her. His campaign team had barely an impression. In a bar one night, Draper asked one of McCain's senior advisers: "Leaving aside her actual experience, do you know how informed Governor Palin is about the issues of the day?"

The adviser thought a moment and replied: "No, I don't know."

Blame the sycamore tree.

McCain had met Palin only once -- in February, at the governors' convention in Washington -- before the day he selected her as his running mate. The second time was at his Sedona, Ariz., ranch on Aug. 28, just four days before the GOP convention.

As Draper tells it, McCain took Palin to his favorite coffee-drinking spot down by a creek and a sycamore tree. They talked for more than an hour, and, as Napoleon whispered to Josephine, "Voilà."

One does not have to be a psychoanalyst to reckon that McCain was smitten. By no means am I suggesting anything untoward between McCain and his running mate. Palin is a governor, after all. She does have an executive résumé, if a thin one. And she's a natural politician who connects with people.

But there can be no denying that McCain's selection of her over others far more qualified -- and his mind-boggling lack of attention to details that matter -- suggests other factors at work. His judgment may have been clouded by . . . what?

So Parker is lapping up Draper's coming New York Times hit piece and deeming it to reveal the solution to the Palin mystery.

What is Parker's problem?

Is she still a conservative columnist? Is she really a conservative?

She cites a scientific study to argue that McCain couldn't help but fall under the spell of the physically attractive Palin.

...As my husband observed early on, McCain the mortal couldn't mind having an attractive woman all but singing arias to his greatness. Cameras frequently capture McCain beaming like a gold-starred schoolboy while Palin tells crowds that he is "exactly the kind of man I want as commander in chief." This, notes Draper, "seemed to confer not only valor but virility on a 72-year-old politician who only weeks ago barely registered with the party faithful."

It is entirely possible that no one could have beaten the political force known as Barack Obama -- under any circumstances. And though it isn't over yet, it seems clear that McCain made a tragic, if familiar, error under that sycamore tree. Will he join the pantheon of men who, intoxicated by a woman's power, made the wrong call?

This reads just like something Dowd would write (only the never married Dowd wouldn't be referencing her husband).

She casts McCain as the male "intoxicated" by a powerful woman.

She casts Palin as the siren.

Positively idiotic.

Parker is slamming McCain's abilities and judgment and she's completely dismissing Palin's qualifications.

According to Parker, "One does not have to be a psychoanalyst to reckon that McCain was smitten."

I think one does not have to be a psychoanalyst to reckon that Parker is bent on destroying the Republicans' chances of winning the election.

Parker is embarrassing herself. She's self-destructing.