McCain strategy courts middle

Sen. John McCain is playing both sides against the middle as he supports sending more than 21,500 additional troops to Iraq while trying to distance himself from President Bush by labeling the war a “train wreck.”

But election analysts and pollsters say the new tack is costing him independent voters, once his strong suit.

As the Arizona Republican, long popular among the liberal media, seeks to secure religious and social conservatives by espousing a hard line against homosexual “marriage” and abortion, independents are abandoning him in droves, a trend election analysts say could be fatal to his 2008 presidential hopes.

“It’s almost bipolar,” said pollster John Zogby, who has done work for Mr. McCain in the past.

“He walks a very thin line here. What made John McCain so popular was the maverick, independent, anti-party establishment, war-hero status. He was popular among independents, Democrats, and not unpopular at all among Republicans. But in the process of redefining himself from the hawkish, pro-surge, hug-the-president McCain, the redefinition has un-defined him,” Mr. Zogby said.

Courting both sides while seeking the middle can be dangerous, Mr. Zogby said.

“You risk alienating both sides, and a strong case can be made for winning from the center this year. McCain, though, is not just making small moves. His is much more like a huge pendulum swing, and thus far, it has not been helping him in the polls,” he said.

Mr. McCain began this month moving hard to the right, declaring his opposition to same-sex “marriage” and saying that he favored the overturn of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that made abortion a constitutional right. Asked in Seattle on Friday whether he was simply seeking to curry favor with conservatives, Mr. McCain said frankly: “I’ll probably get into trouble, but what’s wrong with sucking up to everybody?”

Dick Bennett, president of American Research Group, said that “McCain is tanking fast with independents.”

“He had 49 percent of the independent voters in New Hampshire a year ago, but that has dropped … to 29 percent now,” said Mr. Bennett, who heads New Hampshire’s leading polling company.

Mr. Bennett said Mr. McCain is employing a “calculated” move not uncommon in Republican campaigns — lock down the conservative base, even at the expense of some independents, and then move back toward the middle in November, hoping to draw back some lost supporters.

“He’s still able to get those independents back. The real trick is, how far to the right can he go without losing those independents forever? And that’s an unknown, but he’s shown in the past he knows where the line is and that he can navigate that successfully,” he said.

Mr. McCain also stands out among Republican candidates in his continuing support for the Iraq war and as the leading Senate advocate for Mr. Bush’s “surge” plan.

Thus, Democratic National Committee spokesman Luis Miranda said, Mr. McCain may have difficulty distancing himself from Mr. Bush on the war, which many Americans have come to see as a losing effort.

“He is trying to have it both ways by criticizing a war he always supported, while also trying to stick close to the president,” the spokesman said.

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