This is starting to become a popular meme: the Iraq war can elect John McCain president. McCain can certainly portray Obama as too inexperienced to deal with Iraq and argue that his (caveat-filled) promise to begin pulling out in 60 days is irresponsible. If combined with the promise that there is light at the end of the tunnel, those arguments might work politically. But if Republicans buy into the idea that the surge has changed the domestic politics of the war so dramatically that an open-ended commitment in Iraq is now a winning issue, they are going to be sorely disappointed.