Obamacons, and you know this will never happen but...
What if he really tried to court the ‘Reagan Democrat’ conservatives (salt-of-the-earth types like Pennsylvania’s John Murtha and his constituency), the very votes he desperately needs, not to mention my brethren who are Obamacons? (Disclosure: I thought about it.) Of course McCain’s got a lock on the self-consciously conservative well-to-do white RCs (the Novus Ordo apologetics crowd who ignore the Pope on Iraq, or just shut up and push ‘R’) but natural traditionalists (Catholics, the people Arturo understands) like many other whites — and blacks — are another matter. (It’s like the difference between traditionalism and fundamentalism, the latter self-conscious and as modern as the theological liberalism it objects to.)

Call his bluff.

Invite him to undertake that, before and after election, he will meet weekly with Pat Buchanan and nine others of Buchanan’s choosing to discuss common interests: family values, strictly limited and strictly legal immigration, constitutional checks and balances, national security, energy independence, Second Amendment rights and responsibilities, America as an English-speaking country, and foreign policy realism.

These are all massively popular causes both among African-Americans (most of whom are Evangelicals at least broadly defined, with many of the rest traditional [Roman] Catholics and among the white working class (very many of whom are traditional Catholics and very many of whom are Evangelicals).

And insist that he undertake never to make any significant nomination without the consent of that body within its frame of reference.

He would have to have other such bodies with wholly or party different remits (involving the unions, for example), but this would still make paleocons, as such, a key part of his coalition.

Go on, call his bluff.

I’m not sure this or picking Jim Webb could do the trick though. They knew he didn’t like them even before the ‘bitter with their guns and religion’ remark which is why they went overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton.

Of course not only would he find this repugnant, as contre cœur as joking about his mixed-race heritage (probably one of the smartest things he could try), but if he had the cojones to do this he’d p*ss off his two fan bases (as described by Paul Begala, the old Dukakis coalition), Professional Blacks (not to be confused with black professionals) and SWPL.