McCain looks right for GOP friends

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Sen. John McCain, who made his name as a Republican maverick, is courting his party's right wing.

Six years after the Arizona Republican emerged as George W. Bush's nemesis in the bitterly fought 2000 Republican presidential primary — and, in the view of some, ran against his party's establishment — McCain is taking a different tack as he prepares for a possible second White House bid.

Even as he has picked high-profile fights with Bush over military-interrogation tactics and with colleagues over pork-barrel spending, McCain has been courting Republican power brokers, emphasizing his loyalty to the president and burnishing his conservative credentials.

McCain was nearly alone on Capitol Hill in defending the ports deal involving a Dubai-owned company. He has eased opposition to tax cuts he once complained were excessive.

He recently met with the Rev. Jerry Falwell, a leading evangelical conservative he previously had attacked as intolerant. To the delight of Republican partisans, he publicly lambasted Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, a rising star among Democrats, over overhauling ethics.

McCain is trying to build bridges to Republican leaders in key states — such as Iowa and South Carolina — that he ignored or lost in 2000. And Friday, he was a featured speaker at a gathering in Memphis of Republican activists from the South, the core of the party's conservative base.

"He's reaching out and trying to repair things," said Charlie Black, a Republican strategist. "He is working very hard at it."

He is battling a stubborn piece of conventional political wisdom: the widespread belief that although McCain, with his potential appeal to independents, could be the party's most formidable general-election candidate, his path to the party's nomination may be blocked by the deep-seated mistrust he engenders among religious and social conservatives.

McCain antagonized this powerful constituency in 2000, when he decried its influence in politics.

Some activists remain so opposed to him that they are urging social conservatives to quickly rally around an alternative candidate. Names mentioned include Sens. George Allen of Virginia, Sam Brownback of Kansas and Bill Frist of Tennessee.

"There is some movement now to try to see who we might back," said Paul Weyrich, a conservative leader planning a meeting of like-minded strategists soon.

Early maneuvering

McCain's early maneuvering is important because the Republican Party, as it heads into the post-Bush era, will be shaped not just by who runs for president but by how he or she runs. If McCain were to build his political base without making peace with evangelical and social conservatives — and won — he would lead a very different party than today's Republican Party.

"Social conservatives presently enjoy unprecedented influence in the White House and most especially on Capitol Hill," Weyrich wrote in a recent column. "A McCain presidency would likely change all that."

In recent polls of Republican voters, McCain and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani have ranked as the favorites. But these results may reflect little more than their broad name recognition. Giuliani would seem to have little chance of attracting widespread conservative support, given that he has supported abortion rights, gun control and gay rights.

McCain's backers argue that an increasingly strong selling point for him among conservatives is he would be the candidate best able to defeat Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, the early front-runner for the Democratic nomination.

"While [conservatives] know he's not perfect, they think he's most electable," said former Republican National Committee Chairman Rich Bond, a McCain supporter.

McCain, who declined to be interviewed on his 2008 plans, has said he would decide whether to run for president after November's congressional elections. In the meantime, he will travel the country with a dual mission: helping other Republicans win re-election and building his political network.

"He's doing what he would be doing anyway," said John Weaver, McCain's senior political adviser.

Making the rounds

McCain is to appear March 20 in Beverly Hills to help California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger raise money. Next month, he plans to stop in Iowa to promote the gubernatorial candidacy of Rep. Jim Nussle. In 2000, McCain did not campaign in Iowa, and Bush easily won its caucuses. McCain also is scheduled to travel to New Hampshire in April for a blitz on behalf of Republican candidates.

McCain's supporters like to emphasize that his much-publicized breaks from Bush — such as his successful push last year for a provision that banned the use of torture to extract information from terrorism suspects — mask a conservative voting record on most issues. He opposes abortion and has supported big defense budgets, restraints in other government spending and pro-business legislation.

He voted last year for a top priority of the National Rifle Association, a bill to protect gun manufacturers from liability lawsuits. He endorsed teaching theories of intelligent design along with evolution in public schools. He is supporting a state constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in Arizona. But his frequent departures from party orthodoxy remain hard for some Republicans to swallow.

Most notable was his signature drive to overhaul campaign-finance laws. The bill, which became law in 2002, was bitterly opposed by Bush, Republican leaders and conservative groups because they believed it would put the party at a fundraising disadvantage

Grover Norquist, a leading conservative activist who heads Americans for Tax Reform, is suspicious of McCain's recent embrace of tax cuts and other issues. "It's like an alcoholic not drinking for a day," Norquist said. "No one trusts that this is something he is going to stick with."

McCain should have ample opportunities between now and the 2008 presidential campaign to show such skeptics whether he's staying on the wagon.

For many social conservatives, nothing may matter more than a Senate vote set for June on a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, a measure McCain has opposed on grounds that marriage policy should be determined by states, not the federal government.

"If he doesn't change his mind and support this amendment he will have a virtually impossible task to win the Republican nomination," said Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest U.S. Protestant denomination.