Different McCain vies for GOP vote

With a rebel’s zeal, Sen. John McCain pledged to “take our government back from the power brokers” in his 2000 run for the White House. Crowds packed town halls and fire stations to hear the iconoclastic Republican from Arizona. His bursts of candor sparked thunderous applause.

Launching his second presidential bid Wednesday in a New Hampshire park, McCain, 70, was a man of diminished vigor. Wearing a navy-blue pullover, he spoke with little fervor to a subdued crowd of a few hundred. Antiwar demonstrators watched from behind metal barricades. Grimmer was the scene the next day at his South Carolina kickoff rally: Fewer than 100 supporters showed up.

McCain’s cross-country “announcement tour” was supposed to mark a fresh start for his troubled campaign and give him momentum in the GOP primary race, where many national polls show him trailing former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani by double digits.

Instead, it illustrated the difficulties the senator faces in reconciling the freewheeling maverick of 2000 with the more restrained McCain who is struggling to cement conservative support for 2008.

His denouncing of “platitudes,” “unkept promises” and “old politics” sounded like the McCain of old, the reformer of 2000 who fired the imagination with tell-it-like-it-is rhetoric.

Yet by tailoring his remarks on Iraq and other topics to heighten his appeal to Republican primary voters, McCain underscored how hard it would be to recapture his image as a no-nonsense outsider unyielding to political pressures.

In South Carolina, reporters asked McCain why he supported extending President Bush’s tax cuts, which he once denounced as so skewed to the rich that he could not vote for them “in good conscience.”

To vote against the tax-cut extensions, he answered, would have “the effect of a tax increase.”

His care to avoid offending Republican voters also surfaced after six men showed up outside a South Carolina rally waving Confederate flags, which he described in 2000 as a “symbol of racism and slavery.”

Prodded by reporters to share his thoughts on the group’s flag-waving, McCain said: “Welcome to South Carolina. It’s a free country.”

Also at odds with McCain’s reputation for speaking his mind whatever the cost: his maneuvering last week on the Iraq war. He is the only major Republican contender to make support for Bush’s recent troop buildup a focus of his campaign.

On Wednesday, McCain talked about the war one way in moderate New Hampshire; on Thursday, he talked about it another way in conservative South Carolina.

In New Hampshire, McCain stressed Bush administration “mistakes” in Iraq, and he criticized the White House’s admitted failure to provide adequate care to wounded veterans.

In South Carolina, a state with a large military presence, McCain spent far more time talking about Iraq, but almost none of his comments criticized the administration. Instead, he called for stronger public support of the troop increase overseen by the Iraq war commander, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus. “We’ve got to give this general and this strategy a chance to succeed in Iraq,” McCain told a riverfront rally in Greenville.

McCain also spoke out in South Carolina against abortion, a topic he avoided in New Hampshire.

Candidates routinely adjust their messages to suit different crowds, but McCain sets an unusual standard for himself with the “straight talk” motto emblazoned on the side of his bus. At several stops, he positioned himself in front of the motto before taking media questions, ensuring that cameras would catch it.

McCain also laid into Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for saying Democrats would gain Senate seats as a result of the war.

“My friends, this war shouldn’t be about Senate seats,” McCain said. “It shouldn’t be about politics. It should be about the security of the United States of America.”

Yet at a news conference moments later, McCain stood in silence alongside Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) as Graham, his campaign’s state co-chairman, explained the war’s political benefit to McCain in South Carolina.

“There’s a lot of comfort knowing that we have a candidate who’s been a career military officer, who understands the world, who’s not afraid to tell the enemy, ‘We’re not going to lose. You’re going to lose,’ ” Graham said.

“So that plays well. There’s a reason we’re leading.”

McCain has ample time to regain his footing in the primary race, with balloting more than eight months away.

Though he trails Giuliani in national polls, McCain has performed at least as well as him in such early-voting states as Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

A former naval aviator and Vietnam prisoner of war, McCain used military imagery as backdrops at campaign stops last week -- uniformed cadets, the Yorktown aircraft carrier and a naval yard.

Displaying his defiant streak, he made light of the recent controversy over his jokingly singing “Bomb Iran” to the tune of the Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann.” McCain used the Beach Boys tune as entrance and exit music at his South Carolina rallies.

McCain campaign strategist John Weaver said the candidate of 2008 was much the same as the one of 2000, even if the issues this time were more sober.

“Trust me, I get a pit in my stomach before every event, just like I did in 2000, because I don’t know what truth will come out of his mouth,” he said.

*

michael.finnegan@latimes.com

Times staff writer Mark Z. Barabak contributed to this report.