What should McCain's final roll of the dice be?

Craig Strachan

Dump Palin and put Lieberman on the ticket instead.

adrian Moss

You don't "role" dice, you "roll" them.

Dumbing down at the Spectator? Never thought I'd see the day....

Tariq

McCain hasn't listened to a word Murphy has said for well over a year now, preferring the advice of Steve Schmidt instead. And look where it's gotten him.

james

Too bad petty McCain is in a tiff with Murphy and won't even speak to him anymore . . . He shoulda gone with Murphy in the first place, dumped Schimdt, Veep'ed Ridge, and told the crazy fundies to go ahead and stay home. Too late now. can't wait for a Palin re-play in 2012- she is too funny.

Augustus

McCain has never managed to run a great campaign. He got to where he is just by being himself. He became the Republican presidential nominee on his own terms. Now he is up against a man who turned the skills he learned as a community organizer into a well-tuned, cash-flush campaign machine. A man who thinks he can buy the presidency. A man who dreams of a supermajority. A man who dreams...full-stop.

McCain will not change. He is who he is. Doing something to shake things up is not his style. He doesn't need new antics to show that he's tough. If victory depends on swingers; those who will ask themselves on Election Day: "Do I trust my future, my family, to a charismatic, suave, public official who has yet to prove anything concrete? Or do I go with the man who I know will be tough enough, even if he won't change everything about the country completely? Their conclusions, not the campaigns' further antics, will determine the outcome.

Matthew Blott

What McCain needs to do is forget about winning and worry about saving his reputation. He's a man who has served his country with distinction, who was viewed as a non partisan politician, brave, courageous and a man of integrity. Getting into bed with the men who torpedoed his candidacy in 2000 and pandering to the people he onced denounced correctly as "agents of intolerance" has been a particularly unedifying spectacle. It's pretty much summed up by the fact so many conservatives (particularly in the UK) have started coming out for Obama. My advice - for what it is worth - would be to pull the plug on the ridiculous robocalls that try to submliminally suggest Obama is a terrorist, instruct Sarah Palin to do likewise and shut the gobs of the idiots at her rallies and learn to lose with dignity. Some of his actions have suggested he gets this but the Rottweilers campaigning for him are probably beyond control.

Matthew Blott

@ Augustus

What you say just isn't true. McCain isn't his own man in this campaign - as I pointed out in my previous comment. McCain wanted to pick Joe Lieberman as his VP but instead went for Palin because evangelicals were suspicious of him.

cew

it's time for jeremiah.

derek

Why are you all so busy trying to help McCain? He appears to be, from what I have seen, a rather unpleasant person. Rude, self regarding, morally suspect and untruthful. Let him go.
Have some risk. Let's try the young man from Hawaii. He appears sincere, married once and visits his grandma.
So what, that he is less experienced. His campaign has been brilliant against Hill and now John. A chesd master.
Even Mark Steyn, whom I admire, has gone daft and cant see the wood from the trees. Come on. Forget the partisan position.
Obama is going to do so much. I betcha.

Ganpat Ram

McCain?

Come on, James!!!

Are you still interested in that poor brainless cove?

He ran a right-wing cmapaign in a leftwing year and was bound to lose.

But enough of HIM.

Obama has a far more formidable foe - himself. His own arrogance and folly, his own crazy followers.

They will become drunk with victory and go much too far.

The country will quickly become utterly disgusted with them.

They have run a campaign reeking with rotten, decadent, sycophancy.

That is why their imminent triumph feels so bad.

Hillary or Gore 2012 !!!!

Reg

James, you do know, don't you, that after the McCain/Palin victory, you'll have to go?

The reason? Obamamania - succumbing to, rather than subscribing to.

Reg

Ganpat Ram: Don't you know that a schism has occurred in the Democratic party?

The Hilaryites have hived-off from the rump. Heard of the 'Dems For McCain'?

And what's more, they may have found a new darling - Sarah "Georgous" Palin!

Augustus

@ Matthew Blott

Yes, it was widely reported that McCain was considering Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman as a running mate - a pick that would have reminded conservatives of everything they don't like about the ticket. In picking Palin instead he did the opposite. Palin and McCain together are a credible conservative ticket for serious fiscal discipline, for life, for simple old-fashioned American values, and for winning America's war.