Tips for McCain: Let Sarah Out of the Box, Go Blue

Last week, I offered some advice to the Obama-Biden campaign, which I think turned out to be right: Ignore Sarah Palin, quit talking about George W. Bush, and go rural, among other things. Okay, so they didn't take my oh-so-thoughtful suggestions and now they've paid a terrible price by watching John McCain pull even.

Today, I'll offer some tips for the McCain campaign, although this is a tougher assignment since they clearly seem to be doing well without the help of moi, an elite Washington pundit who hates Palin "because she's an effective executive instead of just talking a good game on the Sunday shows," to quote Fred Thompson. Anyway, here goes:

Stick with Sarah. Might as well keep using her as long as she's bringing in the crowd and the excitement. Whatever ground you lose by traveling together, staying with the Alaska governor seems to make up for it.

....But let her take questions from voters. At some point, she will have to answer questions from voters. This week, she'll be taking them from ABC News' Charlie Gibson and eventually she'll face Joe Biden in her debate. At this point, taking questions from Republican-leaning, undecided voters in a town hall wouldn't be bad practice. Besides, it might come in handy if she ends up president.

Go blue. A plunge into a blue state will throw the media and Obama off and might pay dividends. The Iron Range of Minnesota, traditionally Democratic but full of hockey moms and hunters, seems pretty ripe. Take the act to New Jersey, which might be out of play but can be mercurial. One afternoon less in Ohio or Michigan won't kill ya.

Keep making stuff up. The lie that Palin opposed the "bridge to nowhere" seems to be working pretty well, as well as her supposed opposition to earmarks and pork, since she was very much part of Alaska's welfare-from-Washington culture. Yes, she put her predecessor's gubernatorial jet on eBay, but wound up selling it through a traditional airplane broker. If you're gonna make stuff up about Obama--like the hideous attack this week that he was for teaching sex education to kindergarten students--when in fact he merely supported a bill in the Illinois legislature aimed at protecting young children from sexual predators--then you might as well just go to town. His bill in Illinois guaranteeing that interrogations of murder suspects are videotaped? Just portray it as soft-on-crime even though Obama got law enforcement onboard. And keep attacking community organizing like it's lazy and self-indulgent.

The economy, stupid. At some point, all the hockey mom stuff is going to fade into the background and voters are going to focus on the nation's dire financial situation. McCain needs a series of positive issue ads about what he'll do for the economy, emphasizing traditional Republican medicine like tax cuts, but also his ideas about more energy production. He's done some of this but needs to do more.

Auchi, that hurts. The ties between Tony Rezko, the convicted Obama fundraiser who helped him obtain his house, and an Iraqi businessman Nadhmi Auchi, who is under investigation for corrupt cell phone licenses in Iraq, seems like a rich vein politically. There's no evidence that Obama has any relationship with Auchi, just as Obama had nothing to do with the crimes for which Rezko was convicted. But the London Times has unearthed loans from Auchi to Rezko around the time of the Obama house deal that Rezko facilitated. It's all very vague and there's no sign that Obama has done anything untoward as relates to Auchi. Still, just raising questions through McCain surrogates ought to put Obama on the defensive for at least a day.

Social Security. Obama did say in the presidential primary debates that he was open to raising the earnings cap on Social Security above its current $97,000. That seems like a pretty reasonable position, especially since the cap rises with inflation anyway. So why not clobber him on this one?

The candidates are taking September 11 off from attacking each other, but tomorrow, as Scarlett O'Hara said, is another day.

Photo Credit: Jason Reed/Reuters/Landov

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