Rift Widens as GOP Rivals Court South Carolina

COLUMBIA, S.C. —  It didn’t matter that John McCain gave his first substantial speech on drug policy Tuesday, outlining an international approach that’s part crackdown and part tough love, or that Delaware voters headed to the polls to decide who they want as the Republican presidential nominee.

Both events were overshadowed by the ongoing tiff between McCain and George W. Bush, an air and ground war that is getting more ferocious with every passing day.

While McCain derided the Clinton administration for being “AWOL in the war on drugs” in a speech at the South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy, the Texas governor was bringing his “retooled” campaign here from Delaware, while sharpening his attacks on his chief rival.

Bush accused the senator from Arizona of holding Democratic positions, called McCain’s television commercials “demeaning” and told reporters at a Greenville campaign stop that McCain “says one thing and does another, and during the campaign in South Carolina, I’m going to remind people of that.”

In a fiery speech to students at a conservative Baptist college, Bush referred to McCain in acid tones as “Chairman McCain,” pressing his charge that after serving as chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, the Arizonan is an insider, not an insurgent.

He charged that McCain sides with Democratic Vice President Al Gore on tax policy because both have criticized Bush’s proposal for deep, across-the-board tax cuts.

“Al Gore . . . calls tax cuts, like the chairman, too risky,” Bush said. McCain has also called for tax cuts, but his proposal is about half the size of Bush’s five-year, $483-billion tax cut plan.

“If you want somebody from outside Washington, D.C.--a reformer with results--come join this campaign,” Bush told cheering student supporters at North Greenville College.

The Bush campaign also unveiled a tough new television commercial charging that “McCain solicits money from lobbyists with interests before his committee and pressures agencies on behalf of contributors.”

The Texan has charged that McCain gets more money from lobbyists and Washington insiders than anyone else running--if only on a percentage basis. But an analysis of special interest giving to all the presidential candidates shows that McCain’s biggest donation wouldn’t even make it into the Top 15 list of industry gifts to Bush.

The Campaign Study Group, a Virginia-based firm that analyzes political contributions and spending for the Los Angeles Times, found that telecommunications giant U.S. West Inc. was McCain’s biggest donor, with gifts amounting to $56,350 from employees and family members.

The biggest special interest donor to Bush was financial services firm MBNA Corp., with gifts totaling $220,550. No. 15 for Bush was Goldman Sachs Group, with $98,500, nearly double the top donation to McCain.

The growing row between the Republicans prompted the McCain camp to release its second television spot in as many days attacking Bush’s campaign ads as misleading, saying they showed signs of nervousness.

“I guess it was bound to happen,” McCain says in his new ad. “Gov. Bush’s campaign is getting desperate with a negative ad campaign against me.” The ad rebuts Bush’s interpretation of McCain’s plan for the federal budget surplus. Then McCain charges that the Texan’s ad “twists the truth like Clinton. We’re all pretty tired of that.”

Bush and his aides on Tuesday focused their most furious condemnation on an earlier McCain commercial, one that accused Bush of breaking a pledge to avoid negative campaigning, which ends with the line: “Do we really want another politician in the White House America can’t trust?”

Bush aides said the last line compared Bush to President Clinton, which they considered out of bounds, and they lined up other Republicans like former Education Secretary William J. Bennett and Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) to decry it as excessive.

“It’s sad, isn’t it?” Bush told reporters outside a firehouse in rural Delaware, where he began his day. “The true nature of John McCain evidently is coming out.”

Bush aides said their offensive against McCain had several purposes in South Carolina, where conservative Republican voters had long been considered reliable Bush supporters--but where more recent polls suggest the senator has a chance at an upset.

One is to persuade traditional GOP voters that McCain is not quite reliable on the issues. A second goal, one aide acknowledged, is to plant doubts about McCain’s integrity in the minds of independent voters, who can participate in the Feb. 19 GOP primary. These independents may not vote for Bush, but if the Bush campaign can puncture McCain’s aura, more of them may stay home.

In his drug policy speech at the Criminal Justice Academy, McCain charged that the Clinton administration has neglected the war on drugs. As a result, “the tide of the battle is turning against us.”

In broad terms, McCain proposed a comprehensive drug policy that would stretch beyond U.S. borders and include--if needed--more money and military assistance for drug-supplying nations such as Colombia, as well as tougher penalties for repeat offenders.

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Times staff writer Maria L. La Ganga contributed to this story.