Tacking rightward could sink McCain

If the old Navy pilot can tune out the siren song luring him to starboard, he might have an outside chance of navigating California’s treacherous waters in November.

Otherwise, he’s headed for the rocks.

Sen. John McCain’s original course -- tacking sometimes to port, other times to starboard -- always was the most promising route to California.

Independent-minded. Not a servant of anyone’s ideology. Oriented toward the environment. Believes global warming is real and should be confronted. Opposed the Bush tax cuts because the government wasn’t cutting spending and, after all, we’re fighting a war. Crusaded for campaign finance reform to reduce the influence of special interests. Favored immigration reform that would offer a path to citizenship for people who crossed the border illegally.

All pragmatic positions that panic conservatives.

But McCain also carries political burdens into this left-leaning state, where Republican presidential candidates are on a four-election losing streak.

He’s antiabortion, anti-gun control and pro-Iraq war. Now, lured to the right by the sirens, he advocates making the Bush tax cuts permanent and securing the border before dealing with the illegal immigrants.

His immigration policy, I suspect, still will appeal to many Californians. And, with McCain as commander in chief, voters at least might have the confidence that he’d go all-out to win the war, not try to wage it on the cheap without adequate forces.

It has been amusing since the California primary watching conservatives across America agonize over whether to commit party suicide. Prominent conservatives --evangelist James C. Dobson, columnist Ann Coulter -- have threatened to sit out the election or even work for the Democratic candidate if McCain becomes the GOP nominee.

Fine, be the Democrats’ guests. Pout. They’ll cheer. Make this an easy return to one-party rule.

And, incidentally, why doesn’t the GOP just change its name to “Conservative?”

Whatever happened to being a “proud Republican” or to “Republican values?” These days, the verbiage is all about who’s the most “conservative.” A “solid conservative.” “Reagan conservative.”

Most of these right-wingers wouldn’t recognize a Reagan conservative if he walked in the door.

Reagan lowered taxes and he raised them -- both as governor and as president. He ran up a monstrous national deficit, spending lavishly to win the Cold War. Was that liberal or conservative? As governor, he signed the nation’s most liberal abortion bill. Years later, he called that a mistake. He made one major antiabortion speech a year, keeping quiet about it the rest of the time.

Reagan was a pragmatist whose No. 1, all-consuming goal was to whip America’s adversary. Sort of like McCain. Looking for a true Reagan conservative? McCain is the closest anybody’s going to find.

The question McCain will need to answer sometime in summer is whether to try to compete in California, which offers 20% of the electoral votes needed to capture the White House.

“The days of Republican campaigns writing off California from the first day are over,” McCain senior advisor Steve Schmidt says. “We’re going to compete in California.”

That’s the usual line. But except for George W. Bush in 2000, no GOP presidential candidate has contested California in a very long time. In 2000, Bush ran as “a uniter, not a divider.” He lost here, became a divider, sailed starboard and never returned.

It costs many millions to run in California, and Republican strategists normally calculate that the odds aren’t worth the gamble. The money can be better spent elsewhere. Anyway, the candidates and their advisors are intimidated by this sprawling, diverse state.

That’s not true of Arizona neighbor McCain, or of Schmidt, a Californian who ran Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s reelection campaign.

Schmidt says that California really is a “purple” state--neither Democratic “blue,” as it has recently behaved, nor Republican “red.”

A California primary exit poll showed some promise for McCain, regardless of whether Sen. Barack Obama or Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is the Democratic nominee. If it’s Obama, the poll indicated that McCain could capture some of the Latino vote that went for Clinton. If it’s Clinton, McCain has demonstrated elsewhere that he can attract some of the independent vote that sided with Obama in California.

The poll also illustrated McCain’s ability to attract anti-Bush votes, Republicans who favor abortion rights and voters who oppose the war.

“John McCain can hold the Republican vote together -- the same as Schwarzenegger did -- and also reach out to Democratic moderates and independents, using the Schwarzenegger model,” Schmidt says.

Maybe. But the timing isn’t good after two terms of a detested Republican president, a loathed war and the nation heading into recession.

Veteran Republican strategist Ken Khachigian says it “absolutely” makes sense for McCain to compete in California anyway. Once a Republican candidate concedes the state, he says, the Democrat won’t spend any money here.

“They’ll pour their resources into Missouri, Ohio, Wisconsin. Even if you don’t win California, competing here pins the other side down. Democrats can’t win the presidency without California. So you make them spread their resources and that gives you a better shot nationally.”

Makes sense in theory. In practice, however, the Republican must give more than a head fake to draw in the Democrat.

Longtime Democratic consultant Bill Carrick says: “My gut is that McCain can be a player in California. The more the hard conservatives say, ‘He’s a Democrat in sheep’s clothing,’ the more that helps him. . . .

“The more the right-wingers push McCain to placate the base, the more damage they do to him. . . . McCain can really help rejuvenate Republicans, if he doesn’t wind up being more like current Republicans and less like McCain.”

McCain needs to be his own skipper and ignore the starboard sirens.

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george.skelton@latimes.com