Last year at this time John McCain looked like an afterthought in the Republican primaries. Suddenly he moved up and past his competition and cruised home as the GOP nominee for President.

One year later Mr. McCain is shaking up his campaign team again and hopefully the “quiet” candidate will bring up key issues and take on Barack Hussein Obama for his constant changing positions.

It’s time to take the gloves off and get on the offense without having to become offensive. If Mr. McCain wants to run a civil campaign he better be prepared to hear more uncivil rhetoric from surrogates of Obama and the mainstream media.

Barack Hussein Obama will do anything for votes including change positions, attempt to move to the center, revert back left when DailyKos and their ilk complain, defend his past lies, and now maybe even visit the troops in Iraq and General Petraeus. How convenient for Mr. Obama to suddenly try to build foreign policy credentials and take a tour of Europe and the Middle East.

The public will buy into the Obama pledges, whatever they are, just like the public bought into Vladimir Lenin, Benito Mussolini and Adolph Hitler. After all, “hope and change” after a stolen election and eight years of George W. Bush is enough to give the Socialists an opportunity to bring fascism to American government. Let’s turn the US into Vermont and make Bernie Sanders the new Secretary of State.

Mr. McCain is not about to offer anything new or throw any punches at Obama, he is simply rearranging the deck chair on the Titanic in hopes that the Socialist “wunderkind” will blow himself up. Despite some polls the numbers are tightening and our average when throwing out the highs and lows gives Obama a 4.8% lead nationally, which is a statistical dead heat.

“We don’t think we’ve made the case eloquently,” Doug Holtz-Eakin, the McCain campaign’s policy director, said.

Really, when did they figure that out?

Obama recently flipped on troop withdrawal in Iraq and the McCain press release was so tepid and off the mark I called their office to complain. (Spend a dime – 703-650-5550)

ARLINGTON, VA — U.S. Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign today released the following statement from McCain spokesman Brian Rogers concerning Barack Obama’s remarks on Iraq:

“Since announcing his campaign in 2007, the central premise of Barack Obama’s candidacy was his commitment to begin withdrawing American troops from Iraq immediately. He campaigned in Iowa, New Hampshire and across the country reaffirming this pledge to the American people.

“Today, Barack Obama reversed that position proving once again that his words do not matter. He has now adopted John McCain’s position that we cannot risk the progress we have made in Iraq by beginning to withdraw our troops immediately without concern for conditions on the ground. There is nothing wrong with changing your mind when the facts on the ground dictate it. Indeed, the facts have changed because of the success of the surge that John McCain advocated for years and Barack Obama opposed in a position that put politics ahead of country.

“Now that Barack Obama has changed course and proven his past positions to be just empty words, we would like to congratulate him for accepting John McCain’s principled stand on this critical national security issue. If he had visited Iraq sooner or actually had a one-on-one meeting with General Petraeus, he would have changed his position long ago.”

The problem with this statement is Obama played “bait and switch”, slowly reverting back to his old positions and using the term “refine” to leave himself wiggle room. The Left is pouncing all over Mr. Obama for his attempt at moving to the center and McCain is playing along. In reality, Barack Obama hasn’t fully changed his position so why is the McCain press release tells us that he has?

Until recently, Senator McCain began town halls with his standard stump speech that touched briefly on a variety of issues, from immigration to the economy.

Now, most town halls will begin with a scripted speech wound around a topic of the day. Sen. McCain is then supposed to weave that topic through his answers and come back to it at the end. He will still take questions on any topic from audience members. But the campaign said it recognizes that most questions cover familiar territory, so the candidate’s answers aren’t likely to make news that will upstage the message of the day.

The real news at these town hall sessions should be that Barack Hussien Obama has been invited to attend and has refused because there is no teleprompter. McCain should emphasize this fact and use it to his advantage instead of playing nice.

“Obama’s seasonally adjusted principles are beginning to pile up: NAFTA, campaign finance reform, warrantless wiretaps, flag pins, gun control. What’s left?

Iraq. The reversal is coming, and soon,” writes Charles Krauthammer.

As Obama assiduously obliterates all differences with McCain on national security and social issues, he remains rightly confident that Bush fatigue, the lousy economy and his own charisma — he is easily the most dazzling political personality since John Kennedy — will carry him to the White House.

Of course, once he gets there he will have to figure out what he really believes. The conventional liberal/populist stuff he campaigned on during the primaries? Or the reversals he is so artfully offering up now?

Staying on message is important for McCain but he must reconstitute his campaign by launching his attack on Obama’s constant changes, pointing out his Liberal voting record and not allowing the Democrat attack machine surrogates to get away with the “Bush Third-Term” mantra.

It’s time for John McCain to throw Obama under the “Straight Talk Express” by aiming straight at the Socialist candidate with facts about the Obama lies. Indeed!