I Never Thought I'd Say This...

But I think I agree with Josh Marshall at TPM...

You'll notice that Rudy Giuliani apparently ran too long and they had to drop the Palin mini-movie that was supposed to introduce her speech. Normally people get fired for goofs like that. They didn't want Rudy's blood and iron speech the day after Gustav so they bumped it until tonight. Big mistake. He positively dripped with a kind of curdled anger, the origin of which is difficult to grasp. But he actually seemed to get angrier and angrier as the speech progressed -- off chopping his hands around, baring his teeth. I know the people in the hall loved it. But I think a lot of people will see it as whacked. Rancid. Curdled. Palin's speech ended up being much more partisan than I expected. But that was added to by the fact that she had to start her speech while the auditorium was still awash in the teeth-gnashing froth ginned up by Rudy's speech. I've seen political events that I totally got and others that I thought I got but was totally wrong about. So who knows? 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. The numbers make that look like a tough proposition. But I think a few months from now, everyone will agree this was a mistake.

Seriously, does the GOP really think that turning out the 20-25% "base" that still want to believe that George W. Bush isn't EPIC FAIL will win them this election? I doubt it just as much as Josh Marshall does. Who thinks that the 75-80% of us who want real change won't turn out on November 4?

McBush is making a HUGE gamble in reverting to the old Rovian "turn out the base & screw everyone else" strategy... And we'll just have to see how it backfires. ;-)