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Crunch time on the Straight Talk Express
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Feb. 18, 2000 | COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Then he looks up. "I just heard two negative attack ads during the break," he says.
The two ads -- a ludicrous one by George W. Bush-backing former Gov. Carroll Campbell alleging that Democrats are conspiring to prop up McCain to improve Vice President Al Gore's chances in November, and an utterly mendacious one by pro-life forces -- are part of the nonstop barrage of negativity being hurled his way by the Bush campaign. Tracking polls of South Carolina's likely GOP primary voters have the race too close to call, so Bush and his cronies have been heaving (in the most vomitous sense of the word) everything they can McCain's way. Some in the McCain camp are oddly encouraged by Bush's nastiness. It indicates that they're still threatened, they think. Bush just started running an attack ad against McCain in the senator's home state of Arizona, which holds its primary on Tuesday. McCain is expected to win his home state handily, so the decision seems odd, ill-conceived, "based on emotion," according to a McCain strategist. "Seems to me that the governor doesn't really care much for losing," McCain says at one point, smiling. McCain media man Mike Murphy hands McCain his cell phone. He's doing radio interviews all over the country. While on hold and in between calls, he takes our questions. McCain is asked about a mailing from People for the American Way, a liberal Washington group founded by Norman Lear that accuses McCain's South Carolina strategist, Richard Quinn, of publishing all sorts of nefarious, race-baiting Confederacy rhetoric in the magazine he edits, the Southern Partisan. McCain dodges the question with some talk one might observe is not quite straight, noting that Quinn has worked for both Ronald Reagan and Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., and that he "almost never agree[s] with" Lear's group. Speaking of straight, I say, what does he think about Bush's ploy during Tuesday night's CNN debate to tie him to the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay GOP group? McCain, again stretching the bounds of credibility somewhat, says he doesn't think Bush was trying to do that. "I would hope not," McCain says, trying with all his might to stay positive. "I don't think that would be well received in other parts of the country. And we've got to run a national campaign." He returns to the radio program. Gary Bauer pokes his head in the back room where we're all sitting. The Christian activist endorsed McCain on Wednesday, deeming the Arizona senator's and Bush's positions on social issues like abortion essentially the same, but apparently deciding that McCain simply had the best chance of beating likely Democratic nominee Gore. "I think I finally got my mom on board," Bauer jokes. Christian conservatives eye McCain warily. Bauer acknowledges that McCain's not in perfect alignment with his priorities, but he is inspired by McCain's war heroics and dismayed by the big money behind Bush. During the GOP debates, back when there were seven Republicans in the race, McCain and Bauer were the only ones who supported campaign finance reform and the HMO patients' bill of rights legislation. I ask Bauer why so many pro-life groups are coming at McCain so hard, calling the pro-lifer a baby killer. "It's hard to determine what explains the vitriol," Bauer says. "Those ads are a gross exaggeration of the differences -- which are relatively nuanced -- between" Bush's and McCain's stated positions. "It's unbecoming of a movement marked by its dedication to save human life." An aide calls him back to the front of the vehicle, where he returns to his mission: talking up McCain on Christian radio.
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