Sunday Politics

Sunday politics.

* Conservative stalwart David Frum throws in the towel on John McCain.

In these last days before the vote, Republicans need to face some strategic realities. Our resources are limited, and our message is failing. We cannot fight on all fronts. We are cannibalizing races that we must win and probably can win in order to help a national campaign that is almost certainly lost. In these final 10 days, our goal should be: senators first.

* Kos wonders who, if anyone, will be the Howard Dean of the right.

* The Field posits that Chicago is the ideal location from which to launch a presidential campaign.

Surrounding Senator Obama's state of Illinois and its 21 Electoral Votes are three states won by George W. Bush four years ago: Indiana and Missouri (each with 11 EVs), and Iowa (7 EVs). The McCain-Palin ticket has made multiple visits to those and other surrounding states that it claimed would be in play: Michigan (17), Wisconsin (10) and Minnesota (10), where the Republicans held their national convention last month.

Chicago may just be the best city in the country to base your presidential campaign - in terms of the Electoral College - if you count with a cadre of well-trained organizers and volunteers ready to travel a short ways to register voters, knock on doors and help get out the vote in the neighboring swing states: Add 39 contiguous Electoral Votes in play and another 27 in battleground states close enough for day trips, and the region holds a whopping electoral prize of 87 EVs. That's more than the 73 on the West Coast or the 74 in Greater NY (with PA, NJ and CT).

* And Sir Charles of Cogitamus alongside the New York Times's "Week in Review" explores the "disastrous demographic bets" the Republican Party has made, bringing us to the point where even an eventual Whig-like implosion does not seem outside the realm of possibility...