Word: republicanized
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...McCain can no longer make that claim. A politician who enjoyed a shiny reputation as a maverick with broad appeal has squandered it in the course of winning the nomination and then trying to hold together a Republican coalition that has been on life support for years. Because of the brutish tone of his campaign and the generally spiteful mood inside the Republican Party, McCain faces a period of uncertain length in the wilderness, abandoned by former admirers on the right and the left. And so his latest test of character awaits: How does he overcome this defeat and retake...
...here. When he set out to run for President a second time, McCain and his top advisers decided they had to gamble with his most precious political asset: his brand. Team McCain was convinced that to capture the GOP nomination, its man had to prove himself a real Republican in every way. And so it made a bet: the McCain brand was so well established in the public's mind that he had plenty of latitude to woo suspicious conservatives without damaging his reputation as a straight-talking, independent maverick. Or so Team McCain believed. "Americans know John McCain," Mark...
...McCain's swing to the right during the primaries still wasn't enough to win over many conservatives. That forced him to pursue a strategy during the general election that put galvanizing the Republican base ahead of inspiring centrist swing voters. By selecting as his running mate Sarah Palin, an inexperienced favorite of conservatives, over alternatives who would have appealed to independents, McCain not only missed a chance to win over those voters but also undermined his greatest advantage over Barack Obama - his deep record on national security. At a critical moment, McCain simply gave the experience card away...
...Given the twin burdens he bore of a dismally unpopular incumbent Republican President and an already staggering economy that fell off a cliff in October, it is possible that McCain never had a chance. For all his cred as a maverick, McCain built that reputation on issues like tobacco, campaign finance, pork-barrel spending, immigration and torture, all of which were peripheral to the general-election debate. Meanwhile, on problems that worried voters most - the economy, health care, jobs - neither McCain's record in the past nor his proposals for the future were distinguishable from the standard Republican fare promoted...
...After his loss to Bush in 2000, McCain became the go-to Republican for Democrats looking for a partner on a big piece of legislation. He joked about sleeping like a baby after losing (i.e., waking up and crying in the middle of the night), but he dealt with defeat and his new prominence by pouring his energy into his work on Capitol Hill. "I think you'll see a lot of straight talk from him right away," says veteran GOP consultant Scott Reed. "He'll be the first to criticize what he really didn't like about the campaign...