But the surprise announcement that Gary Bauer, a Christian-conservative activist who until recently was also running for the GOP nomination, has endorsed McCain is forcing Hansen to think again. McCain and Bush have spent the past two-plus weeks stealing each other's lines. He says he put the plan together last summer, but it appeared to be a late effort to steal some of McCain's thunder as the maverick reformer. Some polls now show that McCain would beat Al Gore, if he were the Democratic nominee, while Bush would not. The riskier strategy for McCain has been his decision to drop all advertisements critical of Bush, who continues to pound McCain on TV for comparing him with President Clinton on trustworthiness.
Voters say they dislike negative campaigning, but history has shown that it works.
And South Carolina, after all, is the state that produced the late Lee Atwater, the legendarily tough GOP operative, who helped Bush's father win the presidency in 1988. The Christian Science Publishing Society. All rights reserved.