McCain reaching out to conservatives

WASHINGTON — John McCain seized control of a fractured Republican Party Thursday, vanquishing his last serious rival for its presidential nomination and reaching out to a conservative base that remains skeptical, if not hostile, to him.

The Arizona senator all but locked up the nomination with the sudden withdrawal of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

His sole remaining competitor is former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a populist outsider with strong appeal to Christian conservatives but almost no support among nonreligious voters, no money to wage the kind of campaign it would take to reach them and no friends in the party's talk-radio and TV echo chamber to help him rally disaffected conservatives.

"The contest for the GOP presidential nomination is over," said conservative blogger Michelle Malkin. "The conservative movement is not."

McCain still must win more delegates to assure a first-ballot nomination at this summer's Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn. But with his big lead in delegates, he could win fewer than half the remaining delegates and still prevail.

McCain's triumph was sealed at, of all places, the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, a right-wing mecca of party activists and strategists that he shunned last year as hostile territory.

First, Romney appeared for what was supposed to be a clarion call to conservatives to rally behind him as the anti-McCain. Instead, Romney ended his stump speech by announcing that he was quitting to allow McCain to start taking on the Democrats for a fall campaign.

Huckabee insisted Thursday that conservatives should coalesce around his campaign.

"This is a two-man race for the nomination, and I am committed to marching on," he said in a statement. "As a true, authentic, consistent, conservative, I have a vision to bring hope, opportunity and prosperity to all Americans, and I'd like to ask for and welcome the support of those who had previously been committed to Mitt."

But few conservatives even mentioned Huckabee as a viable alternative Thursday, and talk-radio lords such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity dislike Huckabee as much as they do McCain.

A key question now for McCain is whether he can rally conservatives or whether he tries to remake the party by trading conservatives for moderates and independents as he's done in the primaries, pushing the party toward the center.