McCain's "Fight"

Last week, establishment Republicans worried that the McCain campaign had made a strategic decision to focus almost entirely on stirring up fear and hatred of Barack Obama, much like anti-Catholic sentiment was hung on Al Smith in 1928 and amnesty, acid and abortion were tagged onto George McGovern in 1928.  They apparently didn't have to worry: the angry crowds were fairly organic; McCain's closest aide referred to isolated individuals as "nut jobs," Sarah Palin's rhetoric was toned down (and her earlier rhetoric blamed on her being overscheduled) and McCain was at pains to rebuke those members of his audience who seemed to bait him, referring to Obama as, for example, "an Arab."  The takeaway: McCain has some crazy supporters, and he was embarrassed by them.

This week, after a weekend and some sleep, the campaign is back in a groove, of sorts. McCain's debuted a new speech, a speech with populist urgency, a speech centered around a new theme: "fight." The word appeared 20 times in the 1,400 word prepared text that the campaign distributed this morning.

Let me give you the state of the race today. We have 22 days to go. We're 6 points down. The national media has written us off. Senator Obama is measuring the drapes, and planning with Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid to raise taxes, increase spending, take away your right to vote by secret ballot in labor elections, and concede defeat in Iraq. But they forgot to let you decide. My friends, we've got them just where we want them.

What America needs in this hour is a fighter; someone who puts all his cards on the table and trusts the judgment of the American people. I come from a long line of McCains who believed that to love America is to fight for her. I have fought for you most of my life. There are other ways to love this country, but I've never been the kind to do it from the sidelines.

This is NOT McCain's closing speech. McCain advisers say they're saving their best material for the last ten days of  the race, when, the campaign hopes, three quarters of the remaining undecided voters will make up their minds, and their minds will be concentrating on Barack Obama. When the urgency of the presidential election impresses itself, the hope is that these voters will swing back to the familiar, rather than the unknown.  The last ten days, according to a McCain aide, are when the "imponderables" come into play.