Bush’s Rightward Lean in S.C. Could Backfire

George W. Bush did what he had to do to win here in South Carolina, lurching rightward and waging the kind of slashing campaign against John McCain that he once deplored.

But moves like stumping at Bob Jones University--with its ban on interracial dating--and emphasizing a harder-line stance on abortion could haunt Bush outside this deeply conservative state.

Should he become the Republican nominee, that may be especially true in places like California and the upper Midwest, where independents and cross-over Democrats--those demonized by the Texas governor for the last week--are crucial to Republican hopes of winning the White House.

“The fact that Bush had to become the ‘conservative’ candidate was exactly what he didn’t want to do in this election,” said Mark Baldassare, a pollster and political analyst with the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California. “He wanted to appear to be more moderately conservative, and now that he’s given that up and gone over to the right, that’s going to be a problem come November.”

Bush started out campaigning as a new and different kind of Republican, one who could appeal to minorities and dull the harsh image the GOP acquired under the combative leadership of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. He vowed to shun negativity, wage a sunny campaign and, in a stock line from his speech, “appeal to our better instincts, not our darker impulses.”

He turned away from many of the advisors who helped elect his father president and used his own stable of strategists to underline his autonomy. He outlined a hybrid philosophy--compassionate conservatism--intended to reach out to independents and Democrats.

But with his campaign on the line, Bush discarded much of what preceded. He turned to Old Guard politicians--like U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond and former Gov. Carroll Campbell-- who salvaged his father’s campaigns in South Carolina, while the state’s Young Turks backed McCain.

He poured millions of dollars into negative advertising--in response to McCain’s attacks--and repeatedly criticized his rival for reaching out to independent voters and appealing to Democrats. He suggested that McCain, who shares Bush’s anti-abortion stance, was insufficiently adamant on the issue.

“It’s pretty clear that they have done a lot of damage to one another,” Vice President Al Gore--the Democratic front-runner--observed dryly at a weekend news conference. With rival Bill Bradley struggling to stay a factor in the Democratic race, Gore has been increasingly free to turn his sights to the fall campaign.

He took the opportunity at his news conference to harshly criticize Bush and McCain for failing to support removal of the Confederate battle flag from the South Carolina statehouse. That is a popular position with Republicans here, but another issue the GOP nominee may have difficulty defending elsewhere in the fall.

Bush also refused to condemn Bob Jones University’s ban on interracial relationships, until reporters brought it up.

“This was a situational ethics sort of campaign,” said Bill Carrick, a veteran Democratic strategist and South Carolina native. “The thinking was, do whatever . . . to get out of South Carolina with a victory, then clean up the mess afterward.”

That is obviously a biased view. But even neutral observers, Baldassare among them, believe that Bush’s short-term victory may carry a longer-term burden.

“It’s possible time will wear a lot of the memories away,” Baldassare said. “But the South Carolina primary got a lot of attention, much more so than the past. And it may not be as fresh, but it will be fairly easy for Democrats to remind people in the fall what was said and done.”

Of course, it is all well and good to talk about the general election in theory. Up until Saturday, that was a luxury Bush could ill afford. He had to win South Carolina to save his campaign, or at least calm a Republican establishment.

By defeating McCain 53% to 42%, Bush managed to shift the must-win onus to the senator from Arizona, who now faces huge stakes in the Michigan primary Tuesday.

“McCain is a momentum candidate,” noted Charles Cook, a political analyst. “He has no organization, not nearly as much money as Bush, not as many endorsements. But momentum can trump all those things--unless the momentum stops.”

Another McCain loss on a par with Saturday’s double-digit defeat would be a decided momentum-buster and could effectively clinch the nomination for Bush. (McCain’s home state of Arizona also votes Tuesday, but the senator has a significant lead in polls of the state.)

Already, the McCain camp has been forced to scale back its ambitions in the aftermath of South Carolina. Strategists have narrowed their sights on Feb. 29 to Washington state, effectively ceding Virginia to Bush. And the campaign will also pare its target list on March 7--when a dozen states vote--to focus on California and Ohio.

“The good news is we don’t have to develop a new message,” said Dan Schnur, McCain’s communications director. “We just have to go back to the reform message that worked for us in New Hampshire.”

But in some ways, Bush is a better candidate than the one who sleepwalked right up to his drubbing in the first primary state of New Hampshire nearly three weeks ago.

For one thing, it is now clear Bush hungers for the White House, something that wasn’t always evident and maybe wasn’t even the case until recently. Like his father, who faced similar doubts about his inner fiber, the Texan could benefit for having battled back from his humiliating New Hampshire setback.

“I think [South Carolinians] saw somebody who was willing to set the record straight with regard to what he was advocating and what he was proposing and was willing to defend it,” Karl Rove, Bush’s chief strategist, said Saturday as the results came in.

Bush also helped himself by co-opting McCain’s image as the reformer in the race, a feat that remains a personal sore point with the senator and his staff.

For months, Bush’s campaign relied on the perception of inevitability and a tax-cut plan that did little to excite even Republican voters. By talking up reform--with examples he cited from his Texas record on education and lawsuit abuse--Bush found an issue that resonated with Republicans and helped some with the independents who were vital to McCain’s early success.

“He’s gotten a whole lot better than the guy who underperformed in Iowa and limped out of New Hampshire,” Cook said of Bush. “It’s clear he’s not the 10-foot guy on a white stallion everyone first thought he was. But he’s a lot better candidate than he was a month ago.”

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AN ATTACK AD THAT FAILED

McCain’s comparison of Bush to Clinton rallied support for the accused, not the accuser. A16