Strategy

In addition to the core group of media consultants that comprise Foxhole Productions, a separate group of advisers — known as the McCain Ad Council — will serve as outside thinkers and strategists to the media effort.

That group is chaired by Las Vegas mover and shaker Sig Rogich and Texas-based consultant Lionel Sosa. The MAC — as McCain insiders refer to the Council — includes Jim Farwell of the Farwell Group, Kathy Sosa, Paul Brabender of BrabenderCox, Paul Wilson of Wilson Grand Communications, Jim Innocenzi of Sandler-Innocenzi, Bob Wickers of Dresner, Wickers & Associates, John Gautier, Alex Castellanos of National Media, Myra Adams, Harold Kaplan (a copy-writer who worked with the Bush team in 2000 and 2004) and Richard Price, a senior marketing and advertising official with CVS.

Of that group, Brabender worked with Mottola on the presidential campaign of Giuliani while Castellanos was intimately involved in the ad-making and strategy for Mitt Romney’s campaign. Wickers’s firm handled all of the polling and media for Mike Huckabee in his recently ended bid for the GOP nomination.

The McCain camp brought in almost $4 million last week…I don’t know but Obama/Clinton probably brought in about $25 million combined…that is one disparity…the next is the Obama/Clinton camps have been running full blown national campaigns since spring last year…McCain started out trying to do that but was unable to maintain it and had the left for dead period where he basically camped in NH for 6 months….So as we speak McCain is trying to build what Obama/Clinton have had up and running for a year now…The good news is that McCain has some time, at least until early May, before there is even the slightest chance Hillary will get out…He may even get until June…The bad news is below…
3) Nonetheless, the Wright kerfuffle has hurt Obama in the long run. He is off his pedestal now. This tension between the inspiring idea of Obama’s campaign and the reality of his pragmatic political climb through the hard corners of Chicago Democratic politics is a growing fault line inside the Obama candidacy.

4) Despite a generic political environment that is as awful as awful can be for Republicans, McCain still stands an excellent chance to win the general election but only if he commits to the one obvious and powerful strategy available to him.

5) McCain wins by being acceptable to the independents and white Democrats who will inevitably, over time, crumble off Obama’s imperfect reality. He loses if he becomes caught in a partisan base versus base contest with the Democrats. The job for Team McCain is not to tear down Obama, it is to give those who will become increasingly disenchanted from him (Hillary voting blue-collars, Jews, moderates) a reason to see McCain as acceptable. This means McCain should return to his roots and run as the different kind of Republican he truly is. The GOP base will not enjoy this, but they–sorry AM radio crowd–will not control the outcome of this election. Ticket-splitters and swing voters will.

I don’t think this is a winning strategy…I think McCain needs to find the happy medium between Bush 04 and McCain 00…He can’t do just enough to get the base to show up…He has to do enough to get the base to show up and also to do the door to door, the phone banks, the holding up of signs…On the other hand the base won’t be enough this time…He has to win in some states where Bush lost…Washington, Oregon, NH, Minn, Maine, RI, Wisconsin…Mac can win in these places but he has to hold in other states like CO, Ohio, Arkansas (if Hillary is nominee), Iowa and a few others…It’s a tall order for Camp McCain…

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