Opportunities abound.

1. More government is the solution to every problem identified by Obama. Obama should be pressed to identify any exceptions, which will invariably be a very tiny part of his overall plan. In no instance does he believe that less government is the answer.

2. Obama tried to press Iraqis to delay US troop withdrawals in favor of negotiating anew with his new administration. Why?

3. If the kindergarten sex-ed issue comes up, McCain should be familiar with the language of the legislation. It does not limit K sex-ed to "warnings about strangers".

4. Only 2/3 of workers pay any income taxes. How can he cut taxes for 95% of all workers? Obama says the "rich" don't pay their fair share, yet the majority of people he wants to hit with punitive taxes are small business owners. It would not be out of line to ask him what percentage of the income tax burden the top 5% now pay, and what percentage he thinks they ought to pay. America deserves to know his idea of fairness. He can put it in such a way that he won't come across as defending "the rich" (God forbid).

5. Obama has said he'd consider postponing his tax increases until after the economy improves, so that they don't further damage the economy now. If they are damaging, why impose them at all?

6. McCain needs to clearly explain his $5000 health insurance tax credit. And he needs to flesh this issue out: If costs are going to come down, the only way to do it is to increase competition and consumer choice. Obama should be challenged to produce a single instance where more government involvement has reduced the overall cost of anything.

7. If Obama's personal associations crop up, McCain cannot say that these subjects are tawdry and off limits. What is tawdry is Obama's record of questionable associations. McCain needs to frame this as an issue of judgment, and of fundamental disconnection from the American mainstream - it is remarkable that Obama thought that normal Americans wouldn't be shocked by his company and his afro-centric church. The people in Obama's church went nuts every time Rev. Wright slammed America - are we to believe that Wright avoided generating these rapturous reactions whenever Obama was in church?

8. Focus on the human component of Iraq: First, our soldiers. They have been repeatedly betrayed by democrats, who have accused them of all manner of atrocity, have tried to deny them funding, and have said that the war is lost and can never be won. There is no parallel in American history aside from Vietnam. Both political parties have traditionally stood against America's enemies to the end whenever Americans have been in the field. Our soldiers hear what Democrat politicians say about their war - it cannot hearten them. Second, Iraqis. Iraq is a country littered with mass graves. If Iraq were the size of America, Hussein killed the equivalent of 3-4 million people, and attacked a mid-sized city with chemical weapons, killing 50000+.  Almost every American knew someone who died in Vietnam, and 70000 Americans gave their lives there. Imagine living in a country where you knew many people who ended up being killed by their own government. Countless thousands more suffered torture and repeated rape in Hussein's sons' rape rooms. When we helped the Iraqi people turn the page, we made a commitment to those 25 million individuals. Now that the surge has succeeded, political reconciliation is continuing apace.
We've made a significant commitment to Iraq; after all that our brave soldiers and our taxpayers have given, we're not going to risk failure, as Obama is willing to do. We're not going to give the enemy a drop dead date to rally around, and plan towards. It took Americans longer to get their house in order after winning freedom from tyranny than the Iraqis have taken to date. If we abandon them as Obama plans, it will be a betrayal, and a signal to all people struggling under tyranny and slavery that Americans will not stand with them to the end.

9. He must trace the mortgage crisis in broad terms. For most of America's history, the price of houses kept pace with inflation. Laws written by democrats brought millions of new buyers into the housing market, driving up prices and producing the bubble that has now burst. Lenders were forced to make loans they would not have otherwise made, and then they engaged in all kinds of shenanigans to mitigate the additional risk.

10. McCain ought to paint this housing/credit crisis as a perfect example of the need for reform, and the difficulty of reform. He needs to note that Bush attempted on 12 or more occasions to curb Fannie and Freddie, or to institute additional oversight. Anyone can make a far-reaching speech touching on potential problems facing the country, and years later say, "I warned about this years ago". It takes a leader to deliver change, which is why McCain co-sponsored, two years ago, the most far-reaching reform of F&F ever proposed. Democrats killed it in committee on a party-line vote.
Democrats are openly blaming the Bush administration for this whole mess, and people have to access alternate media to hear anything different. This affects every republican running this year, the democrats cannot be allowed to get away with it. They stubbornly refused, in the face of mounting evidence, to do anything about these problems.
This is a case where both more regulation of Washington and more regulation of wall street was required. But McCain cannot trash-talk the free market - it was government action that ultimately led to the entire crisis. Absent the Community Re-Investment Act and the subsequent changes in borrower requirements, the housing market would be placid. There was no scare in the housing markets during the 1987 and 1991 Wall Street dives. He also ought to note that more regulation is not always the answer; in general, business, particularly small businesses, needs to be freed from regulation. 75,000 additional pages of federal regulations are produced every year. Obama makes it sound like the free market is unfettered, and is to blame - McCain must deny this adamantly, and place the blame where it lies, on the round shoulders of activist government.
Clarifying this is potentially as important for the base as it is for the voters. We've been treated to three weeks of Barney Frank sniveling about Bush's recklessness ruining the economy, with no response from our leaders in Washington. The record needs to be set straight in the only place it can be - an unfiltered forum. McCain doesn't have to coddle Bush - no one did enough to prevent this. But at every step, democrats resisted change. Challenge democrats to open investigations to get to the root of the problems.

11. It makes little impact to challenge Obama's new spending plans if he's allowed to get away with the idea that closing loopholes will pay for all of it. What loopholes, exactly? McCain also ought to familiarize himself with the actual impact on the lower and middle classes of the evil Bush tax cuts.

12. If Obama lies, call him on it there and then. Challenge him directly on it. And if a subject comes up that the media has ignored, include as part of the answer that this is but one of many stories you'll hear little about if you are dependent upon old media for your news. The vultures are literally digging through Palin's garbage, but Obama's past is off limits. Make the point that millions of Americans still don't really know the man.

13. Be ready for Obama's stock answers on infanticide. His most consistent answer is that there was already a law on the books to protect these Illinois children. But the Illinois government was considering new legislation precisely because the old law was not working, as testimony clearly showed.
Obama doesn't know when human life begins, and he's said his first act as president will be to strike down all abortion limitations, including such things as parental notification. Under Obama, America would be the most abortion-friendly country in the world. And Mr. Obama talks a lot about how we're judged by how we treat the least among us.

14. A spirited defense of Sarah may be possible, if circumstances permit. Voters know more about Sarah's daughter's pregnancy than they do about Obama wasting $100 million dollars of Anenberg Challenge education money in Chicago, in his only executive experience to date.

15. When Obama invariably argues that McCain is Bush because they vote together 90% of the time, McCain needs to point out that many votes are not contentious political issues, Obama also votes with Bush frequently - few people vote against naming federal buildings, etc. And Obama votes with the left 97% of the time. Challenge him to name one time he's bucked his party. And point out that he's the most liberal member of the Senate. If Obama is not a liberal, there is no such thing.

Obama is an eggshell covered with tiny cracks. The whole appears together, but it is in fact in danger of fragmenting at any time. There's a legion of leftists who will work for and support the man regardless what he says or does. But the hard rump of democrat voters probably represents no more than 30-35% of the electorate. The rest are potential McCain voters if they can be made to understand just how radical this man is, how vapid his ideas are, and how utterly alien he is to the thinking and experience of the vast bulk of Americans. It's not that he's black, it's that he was essentially marinated in leftist theory most of his life; he has no conservative friends or associates, nor is there a shred of evidence that he ever seriously considered any points of view outside the hard left. A public figure, he's nonetheless led a cloistered life.

TOTA