Bush’s campaign in Southwest signals a move to middle

LAS VEGAS -- From education to energy policy, President Bush's foray into Southwestern swing states this week has brought him closer to the political center, despite recent signs that the president's reelection campaign would focus almost exclusively on energizing his conservative base.

At a range of recent events, Bush has touted education spending and called for expanded access to health care. He has passed up numerous opportunities to rail against the Democrats on hot-button issues like gay marriage and stem-cell research -- issues he and other Republicans have previously feasted on.

Yesterday in Las Vegas, the president brought his campaign to an organized labor event, courting a constituency whose leadership is generally behind Bush's opponent, Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry.

Last night, Bush attended a fund-raiser in Santa Monica, Calif., alongside one of the highest-profile moderate Republicans in the nation, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California. Laura Bush has been on the her own campaign trail of late, appealing to female voters, and she appeared next to her husband on CNN's "Larry King Live" last night.

In a narrowly divided nation, Bush appears to be attempting to keep moderate Republicans and independents in his fold, said Bill Whelan, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, a think tank at Stanford University.

Bush ran as a "compassionate conservative" in 2000, but has alienated many political moderates with his hard-line approach to social issues, Whelan said. By talking about prescription drug benefits and extending the principles of the No Child Left Behind Act to high schools, for example, Bush is emphasizing domestic policy issues, where Kerry is more trusted by voters, he said.

"It's a function of the polls," Whelan said. "These are issues where he does have a gap with John Kerry. It ties into reaching to the middle-of-the-road voters."

Yesterday, the president donned plastic safety glasses and a white hard hat to test machine parts in a cavernous training center for carpenters. Bush sounded almost Democratic in talking about energy policy and health care, though he flushed out his views with few specifics.

"We need an energy policy in America that is less dependent on foreign sources of oil," Bush told members of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America. "We've got to have health-care policies that make it more affordable for people to have health insurance."

Just a few weeks ago, the Bush campaign was on the attack on moral issues. They used a gay marriage debate in the Senate to contrast the president's position with Kerry's, and accused Kerry of having out-of-the-mainstream values on abortion rights in a television advertising campaign.

Bush has steered clear of such attacks at recent question-and-answer sessions. The president has been asked about his religion several times, and while he proudly speaks about his Christianity, he is also careful to say all religious beliefs should be respected.

When questioners congratulate him for banning stem-cell research, he has pointed out that his 2001 decision actually opened the spigot of some federal funding of such research, though only in carefully defined circumstances.

"We ought to make sure we deal with science and ethics in a very balanced way," the president said Wednesday in Albuquerque.

Asked about gay marriage at that same event, Bush said he wants a constitutional amendment to ban it, but he couched his opposition to gay marriage in terms of judicial activism, not morality. He quickly appended a plea that both sides respect the others' right to disagree on gay marriage. "When debating this issue, do so with the utmost of respect," Bush said. "I will do my very best to bring a thoughtful dialogue on this vital issue."

Much like Democrats who once strove to unite the party's Southern and Northern wings, Bush is now wrangling with a philosophical divide between Republicans' Southern and Western adherents, said Bill Carrick, a veteran Democratic strategist based in California.

Many of Bush's 2000 voters in Western swing states -- Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona, in particular -- have been put off by the president's conservative stands on issues surrounding the environment and personal morality, Carrick said.

Kevin Madden, a Bush campaign spokesman, said the president is talking about issues that are relevant to all Americans, regardless of political leanings. In using the weeks before the Republican National Convention to discuss prescription drugs, his vision of an "ownership society," and the war on terror, Bush is making a broad appeal, he said.

The president is not abandoning his base by any stretch. He is continuing to talk up tax cuts, and spends much of his time on the trail aggressively defending his decision to invade Iraq.

His campaign buses feature a "Heart and Soul of America" logo, and his stump speech includes a series of phrases that are designed to rally his more conservative supporters. He drew huge applause Wednesday night in Phoenix by stating his support for "institutions like marriage and family" and a "culture of life in which every person matters." He makes regular reference to his desire to "change America one heart and one soul at a time."

Even his speech yesterday in Las Vegas played to a base of sorts; the carpenters' union has had a highly public split with the AFL-CIO, and Bush addresses to local affiliates have become commonplace.

In Nevada, he was on the defensive over a plan to use Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste storage facility, an issue on which Kerry has attacked Bush over in recent days. Bush was unapologetic about his support of using Yucca, and swung back at Kerry for having previously voted in favor of studying the issue. He told the crowd in Las Vegas that the Massachusetts senator was trying to use Yucca as a "political poker chip."

Tad Devine, a Kerry campaign strategist, said the changing tone in the campaign reflects an internal debate among Republicans who want the president to appeal solely to his base, and those who want to recapture voters who liked Bush's "compassionate conservatism" four years ago. Efforts to redefine Bush will be undercut by aspects of his record that do not match his words, Devine said.

"I don't think he can run away from his record," he said.

Rick Klein can be reached at rklein@globe.com.