Guess who is coming for lunch?

20 March 2006 | Edcoil

[deport]

McCain is making the rounds with the Governors looking toward 08 is my guess. Just a few days ago he was in MS with Barbour touring the Katrina damage. McCain is a politician and knows that the more governors you have on board his 'straight talk express' the more likely it is for him to win the nomination. Look for more of this over the next year or two.... jmo.

[kenth]

McCain also gave us CFR. That kind of assault on our rights shouldn't be held lightly.

[calcowgirl]

McCain adopts insider strategy - Maverick retools for '08 campaign
By Paul West, Baltimore Sun Reporter
Published March 20, 2006

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- The audience will sparkle with Hollywood glitz at tonight's re-election fundraiser for California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. But for the star speaker, Sen. John McCain, it's just one more stop on a long 2008 presidential trail.

For months, McCain has been quietly assembling the pieces of a national campaign: lining up donors, courting his Senate colleagues, reaching out to social conservatives, earning IOUs from other politicians. The outsider of the 2000 Republican campaign is still a maverick, but he is carefully following the insider strategy of the man who beat him.

Now, hard work could pay off for McCain, too. An aura of inevitability appears to be growing around his prospective candidacy, like the one Bush built in the run-up to his nomination, though McCain says he won't make a decision about running until after the midterm elections this November.

Early polling matchups suggest that McCain's appeal to independents and Democrats would make him a formidable general-election candidate, which matters a great deal to Republicans eager to hold on to the White House.

David Hill, a Republican pollster in Texas, said he has been surprised lately by McCain's "extraordinary pull" among "movers and shakers, big donors" and others in elite Republican circles. That includes some conservatives who were cool to McCain "but now seem to be quite warm to him."

Republicans, more hierarchical than Democrats when it comes to choosing nominees, have begun deferring to McCain, much as they did to Sen. Bob Dole, who got the nod in 1996.

"'It's his turn' is a powerful force in Republican primary politics," Hill said.

(snip)