Word is the deal is sealed and Obama is happily taking him up on it.

I think from what I read Obama’s campaign would rather it be in the style of Lincoln-Douglas. That’s a lot of hot air from either side, if you ask me. But maybe McInsane will look less like a puppet if he doesn’t have to read from the cue cards and pose fake grins and winks. I’m sure that was the point.

I think Kevin is correct, McCain is much better off the cuff, despite his occasional outbursts. I think Obama will be horrible, have you ever heard him hemm and hawww during a question he does not know the answer to? It is embarrassing. Having said that, who knows, anything can happen.

I’ve seen McCain speak very compellingly off the cuff. Not too often, but I have seen it. And he delivered a good prepared speech at the 2004 GOP Convention. But lately he’s been awful. The forced laughing the other night was some of the weirdest TV I’ve seen since Twin Peaks. Luckily for him, as Tom notes, probably nobody saw it.

Tom,

I object to the statement “and a fraud to liberals..”. I don’t think he is a liberal fraud at all. You can say progressive (as in Hilly) or moderate (which isn’t conservative at all) but he truly is liberal. And that is how he is going to take many Dem votes because the ones that don’t like Osama-bama know that they will get much more from McCain’t as a “liberal” then they would from a real conservative republican. Heck, that is why I don’t like this fool…because he IS liberal!!!!

Presumably 10 foot will stop by and answer the question, because he is the key McCain supporter I know.

The main theme I have heard is “he ain’t the other guy”, as in “Imagine the sort of Supreme Court justices Obama would appoint: Bill Ayres and Ayman al-Zawahiri.” As your basic vanilla Republican, that was good enough for me.

Of course, it was the argument we heard all through 2006. When the GOP legislators were about to be taken to account for their blasphemous support for pork and expanded government, the main campaign theme I can remember hearing from all the empty suits was “Imagine a ‘Speaker of the House Pelosi’”.

Well, guess what, we got the Speaker of the House Pelosi.

So I think Tom’s question is a pretty good one. If all McCain is telling America is “I ain’t the other guy” and “It’s my turn,” we’re probably going to get exactly what they are warning us about.

I saw on another blog the suggestion that if McCain would announce John Bolton as his Sec of State, he would quiet a lot of conservative murmuring. Makes sense to me, at least it would be a start.

This post re: McCain’s speech, from Izzy at Mod Lang (modlang.blogspot.com), pretty much captures it:

Hooo boy, that did not look good. Forget the comparison with the dynamic Obama or the impassioned Clinton, just watch the thing for what it is. An extremely uncomfortable man giving a leaden, awkward speech. The weird thing is, I don’t believe the speech was badly written. McCain just seemed incapable of delivering it in a convincing manner. The refrain “That’s not change we can believe in,” should have been a rallying cry, a phrase with some anger or at least determination behind it. McCain treated it like a punch line in a weak joke, plastering on fake smile every time he repeated the line. I thought maybe he was trying to go for a Reagan-esque, “there you go again,” genial feel; but it totally didn’t fit the material.