Is the race devolving into a rather ordinary liberal vs. conservative matchup on domestic policy? Possibly. Monday’s events could have occured in any presidential race in the last twenty plus years. John McCain is offering bread-and-butter conservative and market-based ideas on taxes (eliminate or lower them), trade (stick to our trade deals and expand markets), health care, and budget restraint. (Granted, McCain could use more emphasis on tax cuts and better packaging, but there is much to like for fiscal conservatives.) He claims his opponent is fixated on hiking taxes and spending gobs of money; his opponent claims McCain just wants to help the rich.

Sound familiar? Yup. The traditional conclusion would be that in tough economic times with an unpopular administration, the “out” party wins the election (e.g. 1980, 1992). So the McCain team, with limited resources but increased focus, is trying to combat that. How? In part, by making the case that Obama and his tax-hiking plans will only make things worse. Or, as Steve Forbes, put it ” devastate the American economy.”

If McCain can convince voters that he is not the do-nothing Bush clone Obama makes him out to be and that Obama’s economic ideas are retreads of the last 40 years of liberalism, he has a fighting chance. But that’s a tall order for any campaign, let alone one which is going to be badly outspent in ads.

Meanwhile, the cat is coming out of the bag — slowly, limb by limb — on Obama’s Iraq switcheroo. (Some solid advice about how to do a better job of getting himself out of his untenable position is here.) Bret Stephens notes that this would be the latest in the line of Obama strategies. (“Previous strategies include his January 2007 call for a complete withdrawal by March 2008, followed by his March 2008 call for a complete withdrawal by July 2010, or 16 months after he takes office.”) But the Washington Post is nervous that he is finding it hard to drop the “the strident and rigid posture he struck during the primary campaign” for fear of offending his leftwing base. And today he is back to talking about his sixteen-month withdrawal plan. (When he talks to a Democratic audience all references to deferring to commanders and recognizing the developments brought about by the surge disappear.)

He’s now going to let the commanders call the shots. It’s a far cry from what he said in the Philadelphia debate a few months ago when he said he’d be calling the shots and sending new orders, but that was then and this is now. As Jake Tapper observed of Obama’s newfound concern for military advice and Iraqi troop levels:

I have never heard Obama tell a crowd of Oregon liberals that he plans on consulting with David Petraeus. And as for Obama’s concern about whether or not there are enough combat-ready Iraqi troops — this is one of the major reasons why U.S. troops remain in Iraq.” Although his own advisors were warning of the dangers of a precipitous withdrawal for some time, Obama never let on publicly that he agreed with them.

As for the complete change of heart by Obama, I would concur with Jonathan Martin, who writes:

It was perhaps inevitable that he would move to the middle on this issue — and Samantha Power accidentally revealed as much during the primary — but this will be the first and best indicator as to just how hungry the Democratic base is to get back the White House. If they give him a pass on this, the central issue on which he based his candidacy and that which about the left has come to despise the Bush administration, he’s got some real running room on the way to November.

Will the same pundit crowd that cheered Obama’s wholehearted (at the time) opposition to the surge, his disregard for the advice of military commanders, and his great insight that Iraq was not worth fighting for at least give up the pretense that Obama is some brave visionary, above mere mortal politicians who flip-flop for political convenience? Unlikely. I’m sure his willful disregard for everything he said previously and the cynical use of each position he deployed to defeat Hillary Clinton has just endeared him that much more to his fans. He’s high minded and conniving all at once! It’s not hypocrisy — it’s the New Politics!