McCain in familiar spot on immigration
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Sen. John McCain's support for a fragile immigration compromise puts him in a familiar spot -- at odds with another leading Republican presidential contender and with the conservative voters he has feverishly courted.
The 2008 White House hopeful, under fire from conservatives for backing a bipartisan pact giving illegal immigrants a path to U.S. citizenship, fired back in public this week at rival Mitt Romney and reportedly unleashed a profanity at a Republican colleague, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas.
McCain's immigration stance and the resulting controversies revived memories of his losing 2000 presidential campaign, when he was the straight-talking but unpredictable maverick battling the Republican establishment and its favorite candidate, George W. Bush.
But the issue also could undo his years of mending fences with conservatives who will be crucial to picking a Republican nominee in the November 2008 White House race, experts said.
"From the beginning of the campaign, McCain has been trying to achieve two goals simultaneously -- to make inroads with conservative voters while reclaiming his mantle as the straight-talk candidate," said Republican consultant Dan Schnur, a McCain aide in 2000 who is unaffiliated in this campaign.
"The immigration debate helps him on one, hurts him on the other," he said.
The immigration pact, backed by the White House and a bipartisan group of senators, faces uncertain prospects in Congress.
Appearing at a news conference unveiling the deal with Democrats like Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, McCain praised it as historic. But conservatives condemned it and said the provisions would reward those in the country illegally.
"There is a certain advantage in being for the immigration bill -- it demonstrates he has not lost all of the fire and the straight-talk persona of 2000," Republican consultant Joe Gaylord said.
"But immigration splits Republicans pretty dramatically and he is going against the conservative side -- and they are the ones who go to the caucuses and vote in the primaries in this party," he said.
CONSERVATIVE DOUBTS
McCain's candidacy already faced doubts among conservatives who remember the Arizona senator's drive to overhaul campaign finance laws and his criticism in 2000 of conservative religious leaders Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.
Once a bitter rival of Bush but now the president's biggest supporter on Iraq, McCain has struggled to recast himself as an establishment candidate. He trails front-runner Rudolph Giuliani, the former New York mayor, in national polls.
He also is behind Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, in fund raising and in polls in the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire.
He exchanged potshots with Romney, who opposes the immigration compromise, at a South Carolina debate last week. On Monday, he accused Romney of changing his immigration stance in the last year.
"Maybe his solution will be to get out his small varmint gun and drive those Guatemalans off his lawn," he said, a crack about two separate incidents involving Romney.
In one, Romney reportedly used a lawn care company that employed illegal immigrants including a Guatemalan. In the other, Romney was forced to back off claims to being a lifelong hunter, saying he had just hunted "small varmints."
Romney spokesman Kevin Madden said McCain's comments were a sign he was "feeling the political pressure on this issue." Romney took a lighter approach.
"Even when he's wrong, he's amusing," he said of McCain during a campaign stop in Texas on Tuesday.
McCain also reportedly unleashed a profanity at Cornyn when the Texas senator accused him of being too busy campaigning to help on the bill. The outburst raised old questions about McCain's temper.
"I saw no evidence in the 2000 campaign that any allegations about John McCain's temperament cost him any votes at all," Schnur said. "But his position on immigration might."
