McCain Tests New Road to Nomination

Senate GOP leaders Mitch McConnell (Ky.), left, and Bill Frist (Tenn.) greet each other at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in Memphis. (By Greg Campbell -- Associated Press)

Romney offered a big-picture agenda for his party, from fighting Islamic jihadists to controlling spending to preparing for the coming economic competition with India and China. But he won his biggest applause when he condemned the decision by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts allowing same-sex marriages. "Every child in America has a right to a mother and a father," he said.

Allen struck Reaganesque themes in his speech Saturday, denouncing what he called "criminal apologists" who make convictions more difficult and Washington bureaucrats. "We don't want to be dumbing down our [state] standards to federal levels and federal Department of Education bureaucrats in education," he said.

He criticized the United Nations, praised U.N. Ambassador John R. Bolton and parted company with Bush on immigration by saying, "Securing our borders is the first principal behavior of immigration reform, and the second principle is you do not reward illegal behavior with amnesty." Critics of Bush's guest-worker program call it amnesty in disguise.

The folksy Huckabee, who, like former president Bill Clinton comes from Hope, Ark., urged Republicans to quit wringing their hands about the party's problems. "Attitude is altitude," he told reporters who asked why he was optimistic when so many Republicans are pessimistic about the future.

"We're a party of real ideas, but we're also the party of idealism," Huckabee said in his speech. "I think we've got a better idea than John Kerry's misery index and Jimmy Carter's malaise. I'm one of those guys who believes that George Bush's 'Thousand Points of Light' and Ronald Reagan's 'Morning in America' really resonate with America a lot more, and that's why we got elected and the other guys didn't."

Brownback, one of the party's leading opponents of abortion, stressed cultural issues, effusively praised Reagan, approvingly quoted the rock singer and anti-poverty advocate Bono but did not quote the president. His biggest applause came when he said, "I believe the core battle of our day is the battle to defend the core dignity of each person throughout their life."

Frist won the Hotline straw poll with 37 percent of the 1,427 votes cast, thanks to the fact that more than half of all the votes cast came from Tennesseeans. Romney finished second with 14 percent, while Allen and Bush, who was not on the ballot, tied for third with 10 percent. McCain was fifth with 5 percent.

On Friday, McCain urged his supporters to write in the name of the president, saying that early straw polls are a distraction.

Frist claimed credit for blocking Democrats from filibustering Bush's judicial nominees by threatening to invoke a parliamentary change in the Senate rules. "By reshaping our judiciary, Republicans have helped President Bush secure a legacy that will impact your children's future more than anything else that we can possibly do," Frist said.