Thoughts on Meet the Press this morning

Hello all, this morning I watched Meet The Press. On the show were James Carville, Bob Shrum, Mary Matalin and Mike Murphy. There was a discussion about Johnny "the Mac" McCain and his prospects going into the general, with the expectation that he will likely be the nominee on Wednesday morning. They posited that prediction based on how a number of big state primaries on the Republican side are winner-take-all. What may screw John McCain is the fact that the base, read Christian conservatives, hate him. All party luminaries like Dr. James Dobson and others have said they WON'T VOTE FOR HIM. With Anne Coulter effectively saying that she'll campaign for Hillary because of John McCain, the question is whether McCain tries to suck back up to the base, like speaking at Liberty University or even Bob Jones, or whether he abandons them. If he abandons them, he faces the possibility of the base not showing up on election day. If he sucks up, and makes himself the chest beating conservative, he risks alienating the very independents he needs for the general. The fact of the matter is that US general elections are won or lost based on independents. McCain could very well lose independents if he skews too much to the right. It would be the reverse of what happened to the Dems in 2000, where Gore skewed to the left of Bradley and got hit by Rove. Anyway, that's all for now...