what it is McCain is doing<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0with this map.\u00c2\u00a0 But maybe this politico report is just old news, and McCain has already side-lined it to his focus on getting a narrow Bush-state victory.\u00c2\u00a0 The tightening of the polls does suggest that McCain can’t or shouldn’t slide into the “Salvage what you can” mode for keeping as many Republican seats down-ticket as you can — though with McCain’s history with his own party this might not be too doable anyways.\u00c2\u00a0 What I would do if I were the McCain \/ Palin campaign: #1: You have something with “Joe the Plumber” — which is a nascent Tax Revolt which is not going to win you anything in 2008 but will be the kernal of a future Republican victory.\u00c2\u00a0 Go with that campaign tact.\u00c2\u00a0 #2:\u00c2\u00a0 McCain should shuttle back and forth between Ohio and Florida.\u00c2\u00a0 80 percent of his campaign appearances should be in these two states.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe that number is an exaggeration, and maybe McCain needs to lean on Palin a bit too much to excite any crowd.\u00c2\u00a0 #3:\u00c2\u00a0 Sarah Palin can do that red-state tour through the questionably marginal\u00c2\u00a0states such as Missouri and traditionally Republican but swinging toward Obama’s direction states of North Carolina and Virginia and the unsettled West Virginia.\u00c2\u00a0 This is the Base Mobilization strategy,\u00c2\u00a0the states where the natural Democratic \/ Republican disparency should have the Republican win by just getting their voters to the poll\u00c2\u00a0— and it appears to be what she is doing — telling North Carolinas that this is the part of the country full of “Real Americans” (as opposed to the fake Americans who populate the rest of the country) and demanding that Obama come clean on his connections with ACORN (which strikes me like demanding to know somebody’s connections with the Rotary).<\/p>\nThat also might give Palin an excuse to head over to, say Georgia.\u00c2\u00a0 Which is a state Obama is probably not going to win, but is entertaining the idea of making a play for.\u00c2\u00a0 I suspect it’s as much a play for winning the Senate seat there as anything else.\u00c2\u00a0 This brings me to what it is John Ensign of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee’s strategy these days ought be.\u00c2\u00a0 This is the Salvage Operation of all Salvage Operations — the very feeble goal of keeping the number of Republican senate seats into the 40s.\u00c2\u00a0 The situation for the Republicans is that they might lose eight senate seats, and they can still just go ahead and call it a victory.\u00c2\u00a0 I guess the strategy for Ensign and crew these days would be to concede Virginia, New Mexico, Colorado, New Hampshire, and North Carolina.\u00c2\u00a0 Alaska they can leave to Ted Stevens’s devices — which is not a concession.\u00c2\u00a0 This leaves two tiers of states:\u00c2\u00a0 Oregon and Minnesota in one, followed by Kentucky, Georgia, Mississippi, and perhaps\u00c2\u00a0Texas.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0The Republicans\u00c2\u00a0should win that latst four, and purely defensively it would get them into the forties if they keep those seats — their meager goal.\u00c2\u00a0 I guess\u00c2\u00a0for limited\u00c2\u00a0resources purposes, I’d\u00c2\u00a0trust Texas to remain in Cornyn’s good hands, and spend it to keep Kentucky, Georgia, and Misssissippi in Republican hands.\u00c2\u00a0 That is the firewall — Gordon Smith and Norm Coleman might as well be buttressed by third party 527s (“Paid for by People Who Love Puppies”) and probably wouldn’t be too well served by advertisements which end with voters hearing\u00c2\u00a0“Paid for the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee”.\u00c2\u00a0 It is not too good a sign that the Republicans are left with a fire-wall purely with those three southern (and border) states, and conceding a bunch of Presidential swing-states, but that’s where the party sits for the year 2008.\u00c2\u00a0 Well, 2010 and 2012 promise moderately big things for the party, I suppose.\u00c2\u00a0 All of this is off, because the Republicans are foolishly still trying to\u00c2\u00a0pick off\u00c2\u00a0a Senate victory in Louisiana — a little too proud are they, I suppose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There is a bit of conflicting information on this score, but it appears that the horse-race poll numbers have tightened toward John McCain a tad.\u00c2\u00a0 Drudge gets to blare the anomalous Gallup\u00c2\u00a0poll results which show the race in the margin of error at 3 percent– but Drudge probably blared that weird “which of these polls […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}