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When Obama made his joke at the Smith dinner about that "tough primary" John McCain had, he had a real point. That "cross-dresser", and the plastic Mormon spent a lot of money to get nowhere, and Mike Huckabee just couldn't get people to see him as conservative enough. Fred Thompson couldn't convince people he had a pulse.
No, McCain really was picked by GOP voters, in spite of a campaign that even from its start was sloppy, and had a message problem for a "change" year. (If somebody was running in the Dem primary with a campaign like McCain's, he or she would not make it out of February alive.)He did it by proving to the base that he was strong on foreign policy--after all, he was "right" about the surge, wasn't he? And he was like Bush. Except for when he wasn't. Let's face it, they had to pick "somebody."
The long Democratic primary handed the McCain campaign a chance to mess themselves up by tempting them into two fateful decisions: running to the right against a centrist (the "Most Liberal" tag really is meaningless, and most people figured that out) against what should have been seen as McCain's strengths in order to hold onto the conservative base and going negative early. The problem with going negative early is that it's not retractable: if you think something's a big enough deal to make an issue of, even if it's a loser for you or based on a lie, how do you turn around and go, "Oh...nevermind." Take his negative line on Obama's late-term abortion vote in the last debate--it was an unreasonable smear, and McCain had to know it. So when Obama brought up the perfectly reasonable concern about the life and health of the mother, to continue to keep the smear alive, McCain had "scare air"-quoted the word "health" and voiced an opinion (running to the right) that even makes many pro-life voters really uncomfortable and demeans women. To keep the Ayers smear alive, he now has to get into that creepy Red-baiting, who's a "real American" place. It's not pretty, and it's hard to reverse once you've put it out there. It's like trying to suck back in a fart.
McCain's chances would be better if he had run on, get this, being a better candidate, instead of trying to show Obama was worse. He could have stayed on the Straight Talk Express, talked about his own story and convictions in a sincere way, and schmoozed with the media. The media likes that. Instead, because his campaign went negative and had to go into ideological places to the right of where most people are, the disconnect meant less meaningful, comfortable dialogue with the press, and then came Sarah.
Sarah, Sarah, Sarah.
He and his campaign still weren't convinced that the "values voters" part of the base would come out for him. The pick was born out of overestimating how many of them there are, I think, and underestimating his own ability to get them to vote Republican just out of habit. And he just didn't realize how alienating this would be to intellectual conservatives and people who've been around a long time. That groan from the dissenters in his own party was the death rattle of his campaign. They aren't the people who make the most noise--but they are the best part of what remains of conservatism post-Bush, because what is left is Limbaugh-land. Each move took him to The Corner. (And not even all the gang at the Corner can quite handle Palin :).)
Each strategic move had a degree of committment that could not be pulled out of--running to appease the base, going negative, picking a running mate who doesn't appear to have been vetted and whose appeal is limited, and then, appealing to something exclusionary and fearful with the Obama/terrorist link. He went to Culture War without an exit strategy. And he's going to Class War without one, as well. (Seems an interesting parallel to a certain foreign policy strategy, huh?)
No, no conspiracy. The lousy campaign was, sadly, all McCain.
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