Dan Balz on what John McCain will need to do this summer and fall

Dan Balz, one of the best political writers in the business lays out what he believes John McCain must do to win the White House. Balz's take is that McCain needs to brand himself a "different Republican." He looks at the numbers of generic Democrat versus generic Republican and sees no way to fight for party orthodoxy and win.

I see his argument but we see in McCain's Sunday morning talk show appearances that he's not going to frame the race as being a "different Republican" but being a "true conservative." The argument he is building and will continue to build is not that President Bush was wholly wrong, but that he didn't fully realize conservatism. We see this most clearly on the taxes argument. The problem is not that Bush cut taxes twice while prosecuting two expensive wars, its that he didn't cut spending...so says McCain. A real conservative keeps taxes AND spending low.

Look for that to be the argument this fall.