CW tells us that John McCain's ADD-like inability to focus on domestic policy issues and the campaign's repetitive, reactive taunting of Barack Obama will burn through whatever goodwill he has with independent voters.
The truth is McCain's strategy may be at once reactionary, ill-conceived, and entirely rational, especially during this pre-convention period. While in excess of 90% of self-identified Republicans support McCain, this segment of the electorate has shrunk. A lot of Republican leaners no longer identify as Republicans. Instead, they identify as independents. Their political identities have changed; their ideology has stayed the same.
As political scientists Karen Kaufman, John Petrocik and Daron Shaw point out in Unconventional Wisdom, "party voting is at its highest level when candidates are typical representatives of their party and no exceptional issue or event is on the public agenda." McCain is atypical of Republicans, and there are at least two issues -- Iraq and the economy -- which serve to uncercut the appeal of the incumbent party. It stands to reason, then, that his first challenge is to solidify Republicans. He has the solid Republicans; what he needs is the least solid Republicans; the "moderates," the Republican-leaning independents, the weak partisan identifiers.
If the hypothesis that Iraq has become a partisan issue is correct, and if McCain has figured out how to finesse the energy issue, it stands to reason that weakly partisan Republicans are beginning to re-associate with the party they've historically associated with.
So being partisan now -- and from now and until the convention -- might not be the worst thing in the world for McCain.
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