Frum To GOP: Give Up On McCain Before It’s Too Late
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, McCain, Republicans
“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.”
- David Frum over at Wash Post
Does Frum have a point? Is it so over that the GOP should now focus less on winning the presidency and more on making sure they don’t get neutered with a Dem supermajority?
The realities…
The themes and messages that are galvanizing the crowds for Palin are bleeding Sens. John Sununu in New Hampshire, Gordon Smith in Oregon, Norm Coleman in Minnesota and Susan Collins in Maine. The Palin approach might have been expected to work better in more traditionally conservative states such as Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia, but they have not worked well enough to compensate for the weak Republican economic message at a moment of global financial crisis. Result: the certain loss of John Warner’s Senate seat in Virginia, the probable loss of Elizabeth Dole’s in North Carolina, an unexpectedly tough fight for Saxby Chambliss’s in Georgia — and an apparent GOP surrender in Colorado, where it looks as if the National Republican Senatorial Committee has already pulled its ads from the air. [...]In these last days before the vote, Republicans need to face some strategic realities. 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.
Meanwhile, FiveThirtyEight is projecting that Dems have a 30% chance at grabbing 60 seats in the Senate, a 40% for 59 and a 50% of 58. So Frum is right to be concerned.
Still…what can the GOP do in these last 9 days? Pour a little more ad money into these states? Does Frum really think that’ll help much?
I guess we’ll see.
This entry was posted on Sunday, October 26th, 2008 and is filed under 2008 Election, McCain, Republicans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
October 26th, 2008 at 7:49 am
Frum’s comment is a little off the mark. Bush ruined the Republican party, and McCain is just the last nail in the coffin. I can seriously see the current McCain campaign and the past 8 years of Bush resulting in the creation of a new party that will reach political viability (read: can win elections) in 8-12 years, faster if an Obama Presidency is a disaster.