Tipsheet

McCain's Speech: I'm The Real Centrist

Townhallers may not like it, but for his speech tonight, McCain plans to challenge Obama's claim that he is the candidate who can change the tone of Washington.  Here's an excerpt from McCain's speech:
"When members of my party refused to compromise not on principle but for partisanship, I have sought to do so. When I fought corruption it didn’t matter to me if the culprits were Democrats or Republicans. I exposed it and let the chips fall where they may. When I worked on campaign finance and ethics reform, I did so with Democrats and Republicans, even though we were criticized by other members of our parties, who preferred to keep things as they were. I have never refused to work with Democrats simply for the sake of partisanship. I’ve always known we belong to different parties, not different countries. We are Americans before we are anything else."
The audience tonight will be primarily Democrats, so I suppose this is on message.  Still, it drives me nuts to hear him talk about campaign finance reform, and though McCain clearly needs to prove he's not the 3rd term of Bush, he can certainly make that argument from the Right. 

McCain will also go after the media, and make some sort of play for angry Hillary voters.  And he will also make the point that Obama is willing to meet with dictators, but won't travel to Iraq to meet with Petraeus. 

Update:  Fox is showing Bobby Jindal's introduction speech.  MSNBC is talking over him.