McCain Gets Nervous

Ben Smith reports that John McCain's re-election campaign is looking nervous:

This isn't a sign of confidence:

John McCain’s campaign manager Shiree Verdone and part-time deputy campaign manager Mike Hellon are both leaving their posts, the campaign confirmed to POLITICO Sunday....

The strategy team including Rick Davis, Charlie Black, Mark Buse and Mark Salter remains in place in the same roles, Rogers said.

The move came days after McCain unveiled a new television ad stressing the importance of stronger border fence to combat illegal immigration. "Complete the danged fence," McCain says in the ad, which features McCain walking along the border with a county sheriff.

The spot was widely mocked as a dramatic reversal from his position during the presidential campaign, when he told reporters that "walls and fences" were not part of his plan.

The campaign of his primary opponent, former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, seized on the phrase to launch a website, The Complete Danged Truth!, highlighting the incumbent's modified positions during the primary campaign.

McCain is doing everything he can to run from the "maverick" label he embraced during the presidential campaign because with no independents and Democrats to vote for him in the GOP primary, he's got to convince conservatives he's one of them. It's a tough sell given McCain's support for a lot of things conservatives don't like, like the McCain-Feingold legislation that infringed free political speech and the McCain-Kennedy immigration bill that would have greatly compounded our illegal immigration problems. Add to that the Gang of 14 which effectively stopped some of President Bush's conservative judicial appointments and you have a record of a politician who has been anything but consistent.

Arizona could do better.