McCain and experience

Andrew is right about this, but he seems to misunderstand the fundamental temperament of the Republican party. For one thing, most Republicans don't yet think that their party is wrong on the issues. For another, the Republican response, over and over again, has been to say that their policies are failing because they have not been applied enough. Tax cuts didn't revive the economy? Well, we need more of 'em. War on drugs not fixing inner city problems? Well, we need to redouble our efforts there. And so on. They don't believe they can possibly be wrong, so failure of their policy is merely the result of an insufficient devotion to the ideology. Hence the only acceptable line of criticism of Bush by Republicans being that he's insufficiently conservative. So, it makes sense that the GOP would look at Hillary Clinton's campaign for president and decide that it wasn't that she didn't co-opt her opponent's message that did her in, but rather an insufficient devotion to her own message. The only real unforgivable Republican failure at this point would seem to be a failure of will.