McCain Confronts War Resistance, Giuliani Surge

NEW YORK — Sen. John McCain, once the presumed front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, made a brief foray here last week, where his recent difficulties were on clear display.

Visiting the hometown of former mayor Rudy Giuliani, who has sprinted ahead of him in the early opinion polls, McCain met with supporters, who included party heavyweights from the past.

Yet even in a crowd of several hundred donors willing to pony up $1,000 or more for his campaign Thursday night, the Arizona senator faced tough questions, especially about what happens if the troop surge, which McCain staunchly backs, doesn't bring measurable stability to Iraq.

"This is our last shot, my friends," he told the gathering. "We know that the American people are frustrated and sad" about the war.

The surge also may be the last shot for his presidential hopes "unless American casualties are down" by next year, he conceded.

Nevertheless, McCain defended the U.S. effort in Iraq. "I know what the alternative is," he said. "It's chaos and genocide and it spreads through the region."

The burdens of an unpopular war are not the only obstacles for McCain, whose maverick image drove his "Straight Talk Express" into the hearts of many Americans in the 2000 presidential race.

Although Republican primary voters preferred George W. Bush that year, public opinion polls later ranked McCain, a Naval hero who spent 5 ½ years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, as the most popular politician in the country. But that was then.

This year, McCain has shed his outsider approach and now relies on a network of Republican stalwarts. Henry Kissinger, secretary of state under President Richard Nixon, former Navy secretary John Lehman and former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm were on hand to endorse him at the New York fund-raiser.

But he has continued to have rocky relations with his party's conservative base for opposing President Bush's tax cuts (though he now says they should be kept), for favoring an immigration reform that critics see as an amnesty bill for illegal residents, and for requiring background checks for people who buy guns at gun shows. He miffed some in the right wing by skipping key gatherings, including the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), where his McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform act drew boos from activists, who see the law as an infringement of free speech.

Even so, the conservative magazine "National Review" put McCain on its cover with an article predicting that after the flirtation with Giuliani is over, conservatives will give the Arizona senator "a second look."

"McCain gets a bad rap from social conservatives," writes author Ramesh Ponnuru, who credits him for being "rock-solid" in opposing abortion and "tough on spending."

And if the struggle against terrorism is paramount, McCain "has better national-security credentials than Giuliani, having been involved in foreign policy-making for more than two decades while the latter has barely been involved at all," Ponnuru writes.

McCain last week shrugged off both the early Giuliani lead and more bad news — the expected announcement Monday by Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a close friend of McCain, who is considering jumping into the Republican race as an anti-war candidate. Hagel would expand the already large field that also includes Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas among others.

McCain is revving up the "Straight Talk Express" for a bus tour of the early caucus state of Iowa March 15-16. His campaign issues daily announcements of local Republican notables, office holders and fund-raising veterans of the Bush campaign nationwide and especially in the South.

"I believe that John McCain is the right man at the right time," said Alec Poitevint, chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, who was among the first to sign onto the McCain team this year.

Poitevint dismissed the early presidential polls as "interesting but not significant" and insisted that McCain has an advantage because "Republicans believe that he can be elected in the general election."

Robert Bluey, a prominent member of the Internet political blogging community and a media specialist at the conservative Heritage Foundation, credits McCain with having a well-developed organization and a savvy operation on the Internet.

"I think he has a long-term strategy," Bluey said, despite facing "lingering hostility" within the GOP's right wing.

In the restored Hudson Theater just off New York's Times Square last week, McCain addressed a slew of tough subjects, including his age, which would be 72 at his inauguration in 2009.

Pacing up and down the stage, McCain never settled into the seat provided and cited his 95-year-old mother as Exhibit A for his defense.

"She's in great health, and she went to France recently," he said. Upon arriving in Paris, she was told she was "too old to rent a car," McCain quipped. "So she bought one."

Asked about criticism that he has compromised on his principles to please social conservatives, McCain denied the "quote, 'pandering' to the right' charge." He cited actions that continue to rankle conservatives, including votes in favor of embryonic cell research and against an amendment to the Constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman.

He defended his decision to visit Liberty University, founded by Christian fundamentalist leader Jerry Falwell as part of his lifetime efforts to put "differences behind us."