This from the WaPo:

DIXVILLE NOTCH, N.H., Nov. 17 — John McCain’s campaign caravan rolled through the North Country’s first snowstorm of the year this weekend, the start of a last-ditch effort in the state that will once again make or break his bid for the Republican presidential nomination.

As he began his four-day tour of New Hampshire in the state’s northern tier, there is a renewed, anxious energy around McCain, who has become more aggressive in challenging his better-funded rivals and increasingly eager to highlight his military service as voting nears.

New Hampshire is the only early state where McCain holds a scintilla of a lead. RCP has him in 3rd place at 16% on average behind Romney and Giuliani. Iowa he’s in a very distant 5th at 6.6% on average.

More from the article:

“In June, this was sort of like a death watch, and now people actually think he’s got a shot,” said David Winston, a Republican pollster who is not working for a presidential campaign this year.

McCain hasn’t strayed far from the message he presented to voters in his 2000 campaign, offering himself up as a principled politician who will speak his mind without always testing the prevailing winds first.

This time around, however, McCain is explicitly selling himself as a man whose life and career were shaped by military experience — culminating in 5 1/2 years in a Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp — that makes him uniquely qualified to lead the nation in a time of war. That emphasis is a direct attempt to build on what advisers see as his starkest contrast with former New York City mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and ex-Tennessee senator Fred Thompson.

I’m amazed at how much McCain has actually come back. During the summer, I and others were predicting he might be out of the race already due to extremely low polls and a campaign with about $4 million in debt. Plus, he was raising very little money to pay down that debt, pay staffers, or run advertising. His campaign just about hit rock bottom.

However, he has a renewed chance, I emphasize chance, to resurrect something. Will he capture the nomination? I would say no. However, he’s not going down without a fight and I don’t blame him for giving it everything he’s got in New Hampshire, after all, he won the state in 2000.

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...