What do you think he's gonna do with YOUR money?

wait...a conservative candidate from the southwest giving up on a conservative state in the southwest ISN'T huge?

Pulling out is NOT an effective method of electron-tail spin control.

@2: he's pulling out, not giving up. Texas is as close to a sure thing for McCain as any state in the union, AZ included. He needs all his resources in a few swing states. Expect to see "Is Obama secretly a MONKEY?" ads in Virginia soon.

Nobody tell him, but McCain has already lost Virginia.

Unless he can close the almost 20 point gap ... (ROFLMAO) ... in this RED RED STATE.

Texas is going DEM! Wee hah! We're running em out of town!

It's all about the Senate now - they are so close to getting 60 seats - the things Obama could do with control of both houses....

speaking of pulling out (or not)....Levi fucked MY Bristol on Tuesday September 4, 2007 in trigonometry class.

that's a fact bitches!

(levi..i thought we were bros)

Everyone knows pulling out is not an effective method...

for winning an election!

@all: You can think the border counties and my hometown of San Antonio for openly belittling McCain in everything but the big three news stations.

Catholics sure do know about pulling out, so it's no wonder he's pulling out of a state with such a blue enclave as the border and central counties* of Texas.

*excluding counties between Bexar and Travis

omg, the format of tomorrow's debate is teh sux:

http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2008/10/mccain_obama_deal_puts_limits.html

Cool dissection of McCain's strategy to attack Gwen Ifill to prop up Palin's debate strategy of "just read the little cards":
http://harpers.org/subjects/NoComment#hbc-90003659

First things first. As a Texan, it doesn't upset me that he hasn't been back to the state since June. I would be even happier of the current idiot in the White House decided to never move back here.

Secondly, isn't he kind of one degree of separation from "take the money, and run?" Yeah, that's right, I'm talking about Palin and her acceptance of the money for the bridge to nowhere and then saying she no longer supports the project.

I think McCain is making a huge mistake here. He's pulling out, assuming Texas is safely in the bag for him.

It's not.

Texas, like WA, has a lot of rural areas that are very conservative, surrounding a few liberal-leaning cities. In WA, the liberal-leaning cities tend to dominate state politics, where in Texas the opposite is true. It does tend to lean conservative, but the liberal-leaning cities are growing, and it isn't as red of a red state as it once was.

McCain has been polling ahead in TX. However, the latest state poll is now a week old, and he was ahead by less than 10 points. Assuming that the numbers have shifted somewhat toward Obama in the last week (not an unlikely assumption, since that has been true nationwide), there is at least an outside chance that Obama could take TX.

Truthfully, I suspect TX is more likely than not to go to McCain, but it is by no means a safe state for him. He could be making a huge mistake by abandoning it. Or maybe it is a sign that he is running short of cash and manpower, and is getting desperate.

Michigan. McCain wins that one hands down. No need to dawdle there...

RP for the insightful win, as both ECB and I, Texans both, know.

I was already planning on doing a happy dance here in Austin when Obama wins.

If my vote actually *counts*, and Texas goes Democratic? It's gonna be a once in a lifetime, naked in the streets happy dance.

But it's not likely, even with McCain pulling out. Take it from an Austin liberal... we're *completely* surrounded in here.

You can't live in fear, RL.