McCain And Extremes

McCain the Maverick Fights for His Soul: Margolick - Newsweek.com: "...In contrast to Palin's chirpiness, McCain's subsequent remarks sounded ragged—he got the date of the fall election wrong, for starters—and belligerent, far less pleasing to the crowd, some of whom began drifting off. (Anyone watching via computer could see the size of the online audience dwindle the longer McCain spoke.) But the old warrior, who has not faced a proper homegrown challenge since 1982, had snapped back into fighting form. Even a man who can't applaud quite properly can still form a fist. The unlikely spectacle of a party's most recent standard-bearer—and, despite Palin's popularity among the tea-party types, still its titular leader—facing such a challenge is yet another sign of the polarized state of American politics and the narrowing bandwidth of its parties, one that McCain acceded to, and then intensified, by picking Palin. 'The extremes tend to punish any deviation from party orthodoxy,' said Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, who blamed such rigidity in part for his own decision to retire..."