SANTA ANA PUEBLO, New Mexico -- Entering to a standing ovation of Republican National Committee members, John McCain's campaign manager Rick Davis told the GOP leaders he is optimistic about the general election campaign, but that challenges lie ahead.

Nearly a year ago, few would have thought Davis would be standing before the RNC as the representative of the party's nominee-designate. "He has engineered what will go down in history as perhaps the greatest comeback in politics," RNC chair Mike Duncan told the crowd.

Calling the campaign "the greatest return to victory that has ever been seen," Davis said he's not ceding anything to Democrats. "The Democrats like to talk about the future. They like to talk about change. It's interesting to me that that has become the media's favorite topic. And I want to say that we want to talk about change, and we want to talk about the future too." McCain, though, will offer "change that we can talk about in specific terms," Davis said.

"I'd rather have a candidate who can walk the walk than can talk the talk," he continued, offering direct parallels with Barack Obama. "We're actually going to do it."

In a short video, McCain thanked RNC members and asked that the party come together. "It's going to take a team effort," McCain said. "Sure, we had our differences. Campaigns and primaries are tough," he said, acknowledging former Republican candidates.

Aside from the fissures within the Republican Party, Davis acknowledged larger challenges the party faces. Noting a recent New York Times/CBS News poll that showed voters favor a generic Democratic White House candidate by a fifteen-point margin over a generic Republican. "We cannot win the election if our party is viewed 15 points less as a solution to the problems of America than the Democrat Party," Davis said.

Davis pointed to five subgroups he said would be key to a victory in November. Those include "WalMart Moms," frugal suburban voters lower on the economic scale who Davis estimates will make up 17% of the electorate, and "Rehab Republicans," historically GOP voters who have grown disaffected, and a group from which Davis estimates McCain needs four out of five voters to win.

Younger voters, Davis said, will be a new frontier for national Republicans. While thousands pack rallies with Barack Obama, the campaign and the RNC will work together to figure out new ways to attract those younger voters. Acknowledging Obama's popularity and the higher turnout his candidacy has generated, Davis said he won't give up on the demographic. "If Barack Obama wins the nomination, we need to fight him for every youth vote we can," Davis said.

Reaching out to social networkers, which Davis defined as "Facebook Independents," will be key as well. Fiscal conservatives -- "There's a reason there's no taxation on the internet," he said -- the group is more likely to become an activist on their candidate's behalf.

Finally, Davis focused on Hispanic voters, a group that cast 72% of its ballots for McCain in his last Senate re-election campaign. Calling a strong performance among Hispanics "critical to our success," Davis said the McCain campaign will spend their time and money wooing the demographic that has increasingly broken for Democrats in recent years. Davis also promised that most television advertisements the campaign released would have Spanish-language versions running concurrently. "We need to perform as a party the way George Bush did in 2004," he said.

But the campaign, he promised, "won't be a third term of George Bush that we endeavor to define. It will be a third term for the Republican Party." It will take what Davis described as a "second look" to get voters back into the fold. "We know something about second looks in this campaign, and I know we can get a second look for our party by this November."

Of course, while McCain has secured his party's nomination, Democrats continue to fight amongst each other. Pointing out that Democrats have yet to settle on a nominee, Davis joked: "Frankly, I'd just as soon they not figure that out for a while longer."

Yesterday, Davis sat down with Politics Nation to chat about the race. Look for more of his analysis of the race on Monday.