"In the end, McCain's last-ditch attempt to save his campaign fell short. Let's face it. This is not a good year to be a Republican: Unpopular president. Unpopular war. Unstable economy. Even so, the conventional wisdom about McCain had always been that if any Republican could win, he was the guy: a likable hero with a political brand untethered to the GOP. And a fighter, too. When McCain became the last man standing in the Republican primaries, there was a glimpse of his spirit. He had refused to give up when his campaign ran out of money last summer, firing his staff, hitting the road, and shocking everyone by winning the New Hampshire primary. It was a personal triumph. But somewhere along the way, a certain unavoidable reality set in. McCain was presiding over a dysfunctional Republican Party on the verge of civil war—with divisions among the cultural conservatives, the tax cutters, the foreign policy hard-liners. Even the factions had factions. And in the past, McCain had antagonized almost every one of them, with relish. Now he had to make peace in the party to win the war. So he revised his (now virtually invisible) bipartisan immigration reform into a plan to "build the fence first." The deficit hawk found new affection for those Bush tax cuts. Hey, it worked."