David Frum: McCain has lost "the great national middle"; GOP should abandon him and focus on Senate races

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

There are many ways to lose a presidential election. John McCain is losing in a way that threatens to take the entire Republican Party down with him.

A year ago, the Arizona senator's team made a crucial strategic decision. McCain would run on his (impressive) personal biography ... But this strategy wasn't yielding results in the general election. So in August, McCain tried a bold new gambit: He would reach out to independents and women with an exciting and unexpected vice presidential choice.

That didn't work out so well either. Gov. Sarah Palin connected with neither independents nor women. She did, however, ignite the Republican base, which has come to support her passionately. And so, in this last month, the McCain campaign has Palinized itself to make the most of its last asset. To fire up the Republican base, the McCain team has hit at Barack Obama as an alien, a radical and a socialist.

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These last weeks have at last energized the core of the party. But there's a downside: The very same campaign strategy that has belatedly mobilized the Republican core has alienated and offended the great national middle, which was the only place where the 2008 election could have been won.

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McCain's awful campaign is having awful consequences down the ballot. I spoke a little while ago to a senior Republican House member. "There is not a safe Republican seat in the country," he warned. "I don't mean that we're going to lose all of them. But we could lose any of them."

In the Senate, things look, if possible, even worse.

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Our resources are limited, and our message is failing. We cannot fight on all fronts. We are cannibalizing races that we must win and probably can win in order to help a national campaign that is almost certainly lost. In these final 10 days, our goal should be: senators first.

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The best bulwark for a nonpolitical finance system and a national culture of open debate will be the strongest possible Republican caucus in the Senate. And it is precisely that strength that is being cannibalized now by the flailing end of the McCain-Palin campaign.

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Every available dollar that can be shifted to a senatorial campaign must be shifted to a senatorial campaign.

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We need a message change that frankly acknowledges that the Democrats are probably going to win the White House -- and that warns of the dangers of one-party, left-wing government.

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It's the only argument we have left. And, as the old Washington saying goes, it has the additional merit of being true.

David Frum is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author, most recently, of "Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again." He served in 2001-02 as a speechwriter and special assistant to President Bush.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...8102302081.html

[peejay 327]

Can you say, "John Cornyn"? He'll be re-elected to the senate in TX, but not by the wide margin he is used to.