The maverick changes his tactic

A splendid dodge
For one, McCain made the call on the eve of the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, a gathering of southern and Midwestern insiders -- the very core of the party Bush and Karl Rove built. And there would be a straw poll, conducted by The Hotline, to sample the ‘08 preferences of delegates. If McCain is planning to run a “50 state strategy,” as one of his top aides describes it, and if he is planning to run as the battle-tested next-in-line to Bush, shouldn’t he be popular with the delegates in Memphis?

Well, three problems. One, Memphis in the home state of Sen. Bill Frist, who’s also running for president and who makes up for his lack of eloquence with meticulous organization.

For another, most of the 2,000 or so delegates would be from the Bible Belt, not McCain’s natural home.

Lastly, a lot of Bush loyalists are party types, with a native distrust of McCain’s maverick history -- and more than a dim recollection of the bruising, Bush-versus-McCain moments in the primary season of 2000. The hard part of being a putative frontrunner, is that you are supposed to show strength anywhere and everywhere.

So to avoid embarrassment, the McCainanites came up with a splendid dodge: McCain would selflessly suggest that, instead of voting for him, they should write in Bush’s name in a patriotic show of support for a beleaguered president. “Brilliant maneuver,” said David Carney of New Hampshire, a savvy operative who was working the lobby.

In the end, it was perhaps too cute by half. Hauling in busloads of students, and calling on the affection of Tennesseans who respect his smarts (if not his dreadful speaking style), Frist won 36 percent of the straw poll vote -- a decent enough if not overwhelming showing on his home court.

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The surprise second-place, 14 percent, showing of Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts will propel him to the position he belongs: a leading contender (even if his advisors would rather that his organization fly below radar for as long as possible).

Sen. George Allen of Virginia, at 10 percent, could have used a better showing, since he is the avowed and most plausible Son of the South Reaganite of the bunch. He finished in a tie with write-in candidate Bush, whose advisors could hardly have been pleased and relieved by that show of support.

As for McCain, he got a self-inflicted meager 4 percent. Even assuming that all the folks who voted for Bush would have voted for McCain, the total would have been 14 percent, tied with Romney.

The McCain crowd has made the calculated decision not to spend a fortune in Memphis trying to compete with Frist, and they took consolation in the fact that such straw polls rarely are predictive of anything -- Frist is hardly the frontrunner now -- and on the fact that they saved a couple of hundred thousand dollars on what might have been a fool’s errand.

Still, they exposed the risks of their embrace-the-president strategy. If they are such good buddies, and if McCain is the natural follow-on to George Bush, shouldn’t the senator have been the toast of more folks in the Peabody lobby?

It’s a tough hand to play. “Is there a playbook for how to run as an insider and outsider, establishment and anti-establishment?” asked a weary McCain strategist. “If you find it, let me know.”