WASHINGTON - Republican Sen. John McCain will officially enter the presidential race with a formal announcement in early April.
The Arizona senator disclosed the timing of the long-expected announcement in a taping for the "Late Show with David Letterman" on CBS. The segment was set to air Wednesday night.
"I am announcing that I will be a candidate for president of the United States," the senator told the talk show host.
There was no doubt that McCain would eventually become a full-fledged White House candidate, and he had been expected to make his candidacy official in the spring.
The 2006 midterm campaign had just ended when McCain took the first formal step toward a presidential run in November. He formed an exploratory committee and gave a speech casting himself as a "common sense conservative" in the vein of Ronald Reagan who could lead the party back to dominance after a dreadful election season.
As I've said, it was one of the biggest non-secrets here as to whether John McCain would run for president, or not--Of course he would run. He's been pandering to the Religious Right and the hard-lined conservatives since the end of the 2004 election. In my February 18, 2007 post, I've noted that the McCain campaign revamped their entire website, getting it ready to the point where McCain was ready to announce his candidacy. In that posting, I was expecting McCain to formally announce his candidacy in the next couple of weeks. I imagine the McCain campaign was getting a lot of buzz as to when McCain would announce--hence the McCain campaign's pre-announcement on the David Letterman show to quell all this buzz. It is all election PR here to generate headlines for the McCain campaign tomorrow, and then the formal announcement will also probably generate headlines for the McCain campaign in April.
The video of John McCain's pre-announcement on the Letterman show can be views on McCain's campaign website here.
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