John McCain's political guru explains how he wins Pennsylvania

Los Angeles Times ^ | 10/21/08 | Don Frederick

[nickcarraway]

Amid reports of the John McCain camp narrowing the number of states in which it is truly competing, all eyes in the political world have turned toward Pennsylvania (in part because that's where the candidate spent his day hard at it on the stump).

With polls showing Barack Obama poised to win at least four states President Bush carried in 2004 -- Iowa, New Mexico, Virginia and Colorado -- the question has become which major state could McCain snatch from the Democratic column to maintain GOP control of the White House.

That's where Pennsylvania, with its 21 electoral votes, comes in, as Newsweek's Andrew Romano adroitly detailed earlier today. Romano also appropriately cast a skeptical eye on that strategy, in light of what the Pennsylvania polls have been indicating.

McCain's political director, Mike Duhaime, counters such naysaying.

He conducted a conference call with reporters this afternoon, and The Times' Bob Drogin relates that the operative insisted “we feel we’re going to be successful” in Pennsylvania.

One reason: Duhaime termed McCain the most appealing GOP presidential candidate to Pennsylvania voters since Ronald Reagan.

He also broke down some numbers from the '04 race, arguing that....

...since Democrat John Kerry won the state by only 140,000 votes, McCain “needs to flip” only 2,000 votes in each the state’s 67 counties.

Here's what else Duhaime had to say, as passed along by Drogin:

He said the campaign is operating three dozen offices in the state and is making hundreds of thousands of phone calls every week to identify and persuade potential GOP voters. The data mining efforts are aimed at identifying former Hillary Clinton supporters and independents who are prepared to consider McCain’s message. He said the internal data is “trending” in McCain’s direction and is showing “a lot of things” not apparent

[Antoninus]

Fast Eddie will make sure he supresses our vote too.

Thanks for the advice, noobie. Now remember, Fast Eddie is a Hillary guy. How hard do you really think he's going to work for Barry O?

Go peddle your BS somewhere else.

[djsherin]

If you think McCain is a conservative you’re delusional. Sorry but I’m not going to worship the guy simply because he’s better than Obama.

Try and notice here there is no love for Obama. The guy is an inexperienced corporatist with a horrible propensity to associate with questionable (to say the least) characters who leans towards socialistic policies. That doesn’t give McCain a pass.

[word_warrior_bob]

I know this, Mike Duhaime is a conservative, as is his whole family. He’s a smart guy, McCain is his own man, we know that, but I guarantee Mike is not telling him to be milquetoast.