McCain and the meta campaign

Atrios agrees with Drudge it seems in suggesting McCain's little trick at the SRLC will be viewed negatively by conference goers as cheap political pandering. The conventional wisdom is that McCain's "maverick" status within the Republican party means he'll have trouble winning many primaries in 2008 so he's got to work overtime to convince Republican base voters of his loyalty to Bush and by extension the GOP. The problem is, he's attempting to do this, just as the Republican base is turning away from Bush and his failed administration. Nagourney even gets several senior Republicans to suggest Bush needs to dump Andy Card and/or Karl Rove if he hopes to save his second term.

Like all political news coming out now that's thought to have some relevance to an election 3 years away, it's meaningless as nearly everyone will have forgotten, most of all the few actual voters who may be paying attention.

However, it does set up what will be an all consuming storyline for the mainstream media from now until November 2008. On the left you have Hillary Clinton - exceedingly popular with the Democratic base who it's thought will need to make herself appear as more of a centrist and on the right, John McCain - a "maverick" Republican who now needs to move right if he ever hopes to win more than New Hampshire and Michigan. All other candidates and issues will be subjugated to this storyline. Of course if one or either should end up as the nominee it will come to define election 2008.

If things continue as they are, 2008 will end up being driven almost exclusively by this mega meta-narrative, much more so than the tired 'who can keep the country safest' narrative of 2004.