Choosing a Washington outsider will give the Republican Convention a chance to mount a new line of attack and to blunt one of the main lines of attacks that Obama/Biden has settled upon. I'm betting that McCain/Palin will attack Washington itself -- the whole corrupt establishment of both parties. Not only will they attack the democratic ticket, they will also attack the democratic house and senate. They will take some audacious jabs at both their own party and their own president -- though they will probably do this more in sorrow than in anger. They might even allow that the Republicans deserved to lose the 2006 Congressional elections. I expect them to say something to the effect that "we lost that election because we lost our way. "This and other recurrent memes will be meant to decisively answer the charge that John McCain is running for the third term of George Bush.

I'm predicting that McCain/Palin will both call out and call to their party. They will call out the party for its past failures -- again more in sorrow than in anger. And they will call to the party to be better --- to joint them in a great crusade to remake the party, to remake the government, and to remake America. At the same time, they will remind the audience in and out of the hall of the highlights of Republican ascendency. This is where we will get the standard Republican boilerplate stuff. The Republicans will be represented as the party that stood steadfast throughout the cold war and presided over the ultimate victory. They will talk about Repugs as the party that will win the war on terror, etc, that tame the tax code and on an on. They will say that they are the party that will reshape the American economy for the 21st century or some such thing and lead us to energy independence. (Drill! Drill! Drill!)

They will or course make an explicit and strong appeal to democrats of good will. McCain will highlight the times when he has stood up to his own party and reached across the aisle. Palin will echo this message. We will learn a helluva lot more about how she took on the Republican establishment in Alaska -- a lot more. We will hear about how she too reaches across the aisle.

Although the Republicans are the party of loonie Christian evangelicals, the social issues that make their hearts palpitate will be handle lightly. I think they will be more subtext than text. They will be presented mostly through the telling of the personal narrative of Palin. Somewhere we will hear about her decision not to abort her down syndrome child.

Despite the fact that the selection of Palin seems to many to undermine the readiness argument, I doubt that the Republicans will surrender that argument entirely. We will still hear the relentless attacks on both the readiness and the emptiness of Obama. Obama and Biden will be present as men of many words and few actions. Obama will be savaged as a man that has led no great fights, won no great battles. We will learn a lot more about his habit of voting present in the Illinois legislature. Somebody will call him an absentee senator, who after 18 months in office decided to spend his time in office on the campaign trail.

This will be audaciously contrasted with Sarah Palin, of all people. Again, the comparison may be laughable to us. But they will, I predict, make it without blinking. She will be presented as a reformer, a woman of bold, decisive, courageous action.

I suspect that McCain may even do something completely out of the box. He may name at least part of his national security team. And at least one democrat -- almost certainly the traitor Joe Leiberman -- will be a member of that team.

Perhaps -- though I'm less confident in this prediction -- they will paint a scary vision of what a unified democratic government would be like. It would leave the democrats unchecked with untrammeled power. A McCain administration would be dedicated to working with the democratic congress when possible, but it would also have the backbone to put a stop to it when necessary. But this will be more subtext than text because I doubt McCain wants to be seen as entirely giving up on the idea that the Republicans might possibly recapture one or both Houses (although there is exactly zero chance of that happening and everybody knows it.)

A big play will be made for women voters, obviously. But this will again be done through the personal narrative and character of Sarah Palin. On this score, I'd be utterly astounded if they hit hard on divisive social issues. They've given the base its bone in the person of Sarah Palin. They seem not to need to do much else.


If they pull this all off, it will be game on. And we will be in a tough fight. The one thing that's to their advantage is that they will dominate the spotlight and can roll out Palin and their new narrative of the campaign in a relatively uncontested manner.

But the biggest thing they have going against them is possibly Palin herself. She has to perform extremely well. She has never ever been on a stage like this. It's like bringing up an untested AA pitcher to be your starter for Game Seven of the World Series. High chance of failure. Plus we all know that McCain is no orator.

So I don't look for his acceptance speech to be anything to write home about.

And of course, a LOT of this stuff is BS and has an easy rebuttal by our side. But I'm not thinking at the moment about the strength of their case. I'm just trying to suss out what case they are going to make and what frame they are trying to sell.

Who knows if I'm right about all this. But time will soon tell, won't it? (though I doubt I'll watch anything except McCain and Palin.)