Distinctly lowering the temperature in what has become an increasingly heated contest, Republican presidential candidates put on their positive faces in a debate Thursday, hoping to attract rather than repel voters in the critical March 7 primaries.
The nationally televised debate contrasted sharply with campaign trail activity in which Texas Gov. George W. Bush and U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona repeatedly knock each other.
Clearly mindful that a negative tone could turn GOP voters away in primaries in 12 states Tuesday, the two leading contenders focused instead on the themes of their campaigns.
They offered explanations far more often than attacks.
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Bush and McCain, who was appearing by satellite broadcast from St. Louis, tried to redirect questions about their fights over negative campaign tactics, saying they wanted to talk about issues such as education, health care and campaign finance reform.
Even so, their previous disputes could not be avoided. Bush scolded McCain for approving a telephone campaign that noted the governor’s appearance at South Carolina’s ultra-conservative Bob Jones University, which has a reputation for having an anti-Catholic bias.
Bush said he has received support from Catholics around the country who have rejected that message. He said McCain was practicing a politics of “smear” and “guilt by association.”
McCain said he stood by the content of the phone calls. “I’m not here to squabble about that,” McCain said. “I’m here to talk about issues in this campaign.”
On one of those issues, campaign finance reform, they had profound differences. Bush said he favors unlimited contributions to political parties so long as there is instant disclosure. McCain said Bush’s position simply highlighted the need for fundamental change.
Former ambassador and talk show host Alan Keyes, who is running an anemic third, said he would stay in the race, but declared that he would not support McCain if he were the GOP nominee, saying McCain was insufficiently opposed to abortion.
McCain also was asked several questions about his controversial remarks condemning two leaders of the Christian conservative movement, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. “I think the fact is I have rejected the leadership of these two individuals who have led our party in the wrong direction,” McCain said.
He stood by his rebuke of the two, saying they promoted a “message of intolerance and exclusion” that is a direct contradiction to a winning Republican message.
When asked if his stance were posturing, as McCain had appeared on Robertson’s “700 Club” on television and had a 100 percent rating from the Christian Coalition, McCain replied that he shared the “values and goals of the rank-and-file of the so-called Christian right. . . . I believe they (Robertson and Falwell) have led good and wonderful people in a message of intolerance.
“I want the party of Abraham Lincoln, not the party of Bob Jones.”
McCain also ruled out abandoning the Republican Party if he lost the nomination fight. “I am a loyal Republican,” he said, vowing to support whoever wins the GOP nomination.
Asked how he could attract independents and Democrats who have supported McCain, Bush said those same voters would rally to him because he had “set a hopeful vision for the future.”
Bush and McCain disagreed mildly over education policy. Bush’s education plan calls for the federal government to give money to the states in exchange for the states’ providing federal measures of accountability.
McCain said he thought it would be a “serious mistake to allow some bureaucrat in Washington” to decide the fate of students in his home state of Arizona.
McCain stumbled for a moment when asked to detail his most important contribution to education policy in his long career in Congress. He then mentioned being involved in several reform measures in Arizona and service on an education committee in the House of Representatives.
Bush had his own awkward moments. When asked why he opposed requiring gunmakers to install trigger locks, Bush said: “I don’t mind trigger locks. The question is, how do we enforce it? Are we going to have trigger-lock police knocking on people’s doors saying show me your trigger lock?”
Thursday’s debate was only one of the venues where the two battled.
In New York, they sparred over two new ads that criticize McCain. In one, a breast cancer survivor speaks out against McCain for calling for the elimination of some funding for cancer research.
In the other, a new group loosely aligned with Bush attacks McCain on environmental issues. The environmental ad also is running in California and Ohio.
McCain’s campaign charged that Bush was wildly distorting his legislative record. Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign manager, charged that the environmental group’s effort was a “flagrant violation of federal campaign activity.”
McCain said he has long supported the federal funding of breast cancer research. On the only occasion he voted against such a provision, he said, it was because the money was being taken out of the defense budget. It should have come from the budget that funds health and human services programs, McCain said.
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