As McCain targets center can he hold the right?

By Ed Stoddard

DALLAS (Reuters) - Sen. John McCain is aiming for America's political center in the hopes of hitting a political bulls-eye in the November U.S. presidential election.

Departing from the strategy of focusing on the right-wing

and evangelical Christian base that won fellow Republican George W. Bush two elections, McCain is reaching out more to independents and encroaching on traditional Democratic territory.

Analysts say his reach for the middle makes sense given his shaky standing with the party's right wing, although wooing this group at the same time could be a delicate balancing act.

Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, said the Bush strategy, guided by his political mentor Karl Rove, was to "pound the base endlessly hoping for a narrow majority."

That strategy showed its limitations in the 2006 congressional elections, however, when, with the country mired in the Iraq war and the economy weakening, Republicans lost control of Congress.

"The assumption now is that there is an independent vote in the middle of the electorate disgusted with both party fringes," Jillson said.

A March survey by the Pew Research Center showed McCain polling ahead of both his two possible Democratic presidential rivals, Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, among voters who are not already committed to one party or the other.

McCain has been showing a kind of concern for social issues more associated with Democrats than Republicans. Last week he went on a "poverty tour," visiting depressed Kentucky coal towns and New Orleans, which is still recovering from its 2005 battering by Hurricane Katrina.

This week the 71-year-old Vietnam veteran and war hero has been on a tour to highlight his health care proposals.

The Bush/Rove strategy that Jillson described was aimed at conservative evangelical Protestants who were galvanized to get out and vote by the use of so-called hot button social issues such as abortion and gay marriage.

McCain gets poor marks from some prominent conservative evangelicals who are angered by his past support for stem cell research and his failure to back a federal constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, among other things.

But his consistent opposition to abortion rights gives him some credit among religiously-motivated social conservatives and his unflinching support for the Iraq war appeals to the right wing.

McCain's emphasis on family choice in health care and proposals for private sector initiatives to combat joblessness and poverty appeal to both moderate and conservative voters.

EVANGELICAL CENTER