National anti-Bush sentiment has long since ruled out a serious run by anyone associated with the current administration, and voters have made clear their distaste for Republicans in the House of Representatives. Over in the Senate, Majority Leader Bill Frist, a favorite of many conservatives — Karl Rove once said Frist’s was the only ’08 campaign he’d consider working for — has seen his stock drop precipitously, particularly after leading the charge on the Terri Schiavo fiasco. Two other senators popular on the right, George Allen and Rick Santorum, were defeated for re-election and are now out of the picture.

Norquist says that, since the November 9 election, he has been getting e-mails from fellow conservatives who had previously supported George Allen for president. “They are now saying, ‘I’m with Mitt Romney,’ or ‘I’ve just met with Romney and I’m impressed,’ ” says Norquist.

There are still plenty of ’08 hopefuls left, and Republicans of different stripes are split or undecided among them. If these conservatives remain divided, McCain will coast to victory. So the question is, how badly do conservatives want to stop McCain?

“Completely unacceptable”
McCain’s frequent television appearances give the average viewer a distorted view of his relationship to the Republican Party. In fact, his well-cultivated image, so appealing to independent voters in 2000, has earned him the ire of movement conservatives.

“I find John McCain completely unacceptable,” says Peter Ferrara, senior policy analyst for the Institute for Policy Innovation, a Washington-based small-government think tank.

“He’s completely unfit to serve as president,” says David Keating, executive director of Club for Growth, a powerful right-wing organization.

This hatred dates to McCain’s signature campaign-finance-reform legislation, co-sponsored with liberal senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, which severely limited the large-sum individual and corporate contributions that had previously fueled Republican campaigns.

But that’s not their only problem with the Arizona senator. McCain voted against the Bush tax cuts (although he later voted for making them permanent). He has supported gun-control legislation. He led the “Gang of 14” senators in preventing the so-called nuclear option, a change in procedure that would have allowed Republicans to confirm conservative judges over Democratic opposition. He voted for federal spending on stem-cell research, and opposes a federal ban on gay marriage. He is one of the most pro-environment Republicans on Capital Hill, supporting the Kyoto Treaty and even co-authoring a failed bill to limit carbon-dioxide emissions. And, in a move tailor-made for attack ads, he co-authored the “amnesty-by-another-name” immigration-reform legislation — with Ted Kennedy, no less — that dominated right-wing talk radio much of the year.

But McCain’s true nemesis is Norquist himself, who led the effort, at the behest of Karl Rove, to crush the Arizonan’s 2000 aspirations. Since then, Norquist has regularly insulted McCain in the press, and McCain has fired right back.

There were rumors of appeasement in the spring, after McCain, who chaired last year’s Senate hearings on the Jack Abramoff scandal, seemed to go easy on Norquist when he was called to testify. But by summer, the animosity was back, with Norquist blasting away and a McCain aide telling the Washington Post: “Obviously Grover is not well. It would be cruel of us to respond in kind.”

Two months ago, McCain was again assailed by the right — including in the New Hampshire Union Leader — for disagreeing with Bush on the treatment of suspected terrorists. Romney jumped at the opening, and was quoted in a New York Times article emphasizing his policy differences with McCain: “We have different views on McCain-Feingold, differing views on immigration policy, differing views on the interrogation of terrorists.”

“Even conservative Republicans are looking for somebody more moderate, somebody who has a chance at winning,” agrees J. Christopher Williams, president of the Greater Nashua Chamber of Commerce. That group held a straw poll at its annual dinner last week, with Romney finishing a strong third, but McCain and Giuliani combined to take nearly two-thirds of the Republican votes.

To Carney, only Washington insiders care so deeply about “process issues” like campaign-finance reform. McCain is solid on issues important to conservative activists around the country, he says.

But, of course, McCain’s enemies needn’t attack him on those arcane issues; they can Swift Boat him on whatever they think will work: illegal immigration, McCain’s involvement in the old “Keating 5” scandal, even his admitted marital infidelities.