McCain sets sights on moderates

Faced with a crumbling Republican Party image, Sen. John McCain is gambling on a general-election strategy that relies on winning over conservative Democrats and independents, breaking with President Bush’s 2000 and 2004 game plan of focusing on the party’s core voters.

“This time, we are working to get a larger share than normal of independents and conservative Democrats, mainly because our own base is narrower than four years ago,” said McCain campaign senior adviser Charles Black, who has been a part of every GOP presidential campaign since Ronald Reagan’s nomination run in 1976.

The Arizona senator has spent his time campaigning on Democrats’ ground since he sewed up the Republican nomination March 4.

He is on a weeklong tour to discuss his concern over health care costs, and recently completed a weeklong tour of impoverished areas where Republicans don’t often campaign. That included a high-profile visit to Inez, Ky., where former President Lyndon B. Johnson announced his war on poverty and the place former Democratic presidential hopeful and former Sen. John Edwards visited during his own populist campaign.

Some of Mr. McCain’s tactics make it seem as if he is chasing Mr. Edwards’ Democratic supporters by adopting a populist criticism of “greedy” corporate CEOs and by traveling to New Orleans to deliver a rebuke to Mr. Bush — the city Mr. Edwards used to launch, and later end, his own presidential bid.

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Noting there are more Democrats and independents up for grabs than in recent elections, Frank J. Donatelli, the Republican National Committee’s deputy chairman, says Mr. McCain needs a center-right coalition to win, just as the Democrat will need a center-left coalition.

“We intend to beat them to the center,” he said.

The risk for Mr. McCain’s appealing to the center is that occasionally he will have to “cross pressure” his base on certain issues and causes, which inevitably will rub orthodox conservatives the wrong way and worsen his relations with them.

“It ignores the reality that it is the people on the right who are the activists in the party,” said pollster and strategist Michael McKenna, who said those voters make up Republicans’ get-out-the-vote effort.

“How is Ohio or Pennsylvania or Missouri going to be won by someone with no phone banks, no micro-targeting, no get-out-the-vote effort? Short answer: They are not going to be won. The fundraising numbers are a reflection of this phenomenon.”

Mr. McKenna said about 40 percent of the electorate is reliably Republican, 40 percent is Democrat and the rest is truly up for grabs — and this year that’s bad news for Mr. McCain.

“I suspect that some chunk of the independents have already decided it is time to change the team at the White House. My guess is that the best he can hope for is to get about 40 percent of the independents. My math suggests that means he is chasing about 8 percent of the electorate, while ignoring or angering about 40 percent — the self-identified conservatives,” Mr. McKenna said.

To some critics, Mr. McCain has acted as if he was somehow unaware of just how much his sponsorship of campaign finance regulations, one-time opposition to the Bush tax cuts and support of Mr. Bush’s immigration policies had infuriated some leaders and grass-roots activists on the right.

But the reward might outweigh the risk, at least at this time, with polls continuing to show that Democrats say they’re willing to abandon the party unless their candidate wins the party’s divisive nominating contest between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

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