back to basics

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo reads last night like this:

But take this as a sign that the McCain campaign has abandoned an effort to compete for swing voters and go back to the base energizing strategy that worked for President Bush in 2004.

Will it work? Peggy Noonan isn't sure. In her column she recounts a conversation she had recently:

I got on the subject of the leaders of the Republican party assuming, now, that whatever the base of the Republican party thinks is what America thinks. I made the case that this is no longer true, that party leaders seem to me stuck in the assumptions of 1988 and 1994, the assumptions that reigned when they were young and coming up... But, I argued, that's over, those assumptions are yesterday, the party can no longer assume that its base is utterly in line with the thinking of the American people.

(Read the whole thing. It's great.)

                                                                                                                                                       • posted by Claudia Jean