McCain's Right Flank

Team McCain dismisses Norquist as being obsessed with the senator and worried that McCain's probe of the lobbying business could imperil Nor-quist's influence network, the so-called K Street Project, which he built with the likes of former House majority leader Tom DeLay and indicted superlobbyist Jack Abramoff. One senior McCain aide compared Norquist to a classic 1920s tale of a huckster-preacher. "The K Street Project will be moving," said the aide, who requested anonymity to avoid a public dispute with Norquist. "Elmer Gantry had to as well." (Norquist says McCain's aides have made empty threats about the Abramoff investigation, and that Abramoff "never tried to involve me in anything that was inappropriate.")

McCain has so much early momentum that he may not need Norquist. He ended his feud with Bush in 2004 and has since wooed a handful of Bush's fund-raisers and operatives, including Texas billionaires Charles and Sam Wyly, who spent more than $2.5 million attacking his environmental policies in 2000. In the most wide-open presidential race in a generation, the party is already feeling the pressure to coalesce around someone who can beat Hillary Clinton. One recent poll in South Carolina gave the senator a 26-point lead over his nearest GOP rival, Rudy Giuliani--who has his own problems with the right. With numbers like that, McCain might not feel inspired to find a new religion.

With Holly Bailey

© 2006