McCain decries Dems during campaign stops in South

BY KEITH HERBERT | keith.herbert@newsday.com; This stor

February 3, 2008

ATLANTA - Republican John McCain ended a day of campaigning through the South yesterday with a rally in Atlanta, where he took shots at Democrats but didn't mention his Republican opponents.

He touched on familiar campaign themes in a ballroom full of supporters at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center in Cobb County, Ga., blasting pledges by Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton to remove U.S. troops from Iraq.

"Senator Obama and Senator Clinton want to surrender," he said. "They want to set a date for withdrawal. That's surrender. I'll never surrender." He said the troops will come out, "but with honor and not in defeat."

Entering the ballroom to the theme song from "Rocky," the Arizona senator also weighed in on the troubled U.S. economy. "My friends, we've got some work to do," he said, adding that any stimulus package from Washington should not be loaded with "pork-barrel spending."

McCain, joined on stage by former Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas, said Congress needs to make President George W. Bush's tax cuts permanent and, on the hot-button issue of immigration, promised to "secure the borders first," then move on.

Earlier in the day, McCain hopscotched across the South, stopping in Tennessee and Alabama on the final weekend before Super Tuesday. Adding heft to his campaign in New York, he garnered the endorsements of four influential Republicans: state Sen. Joe Bruno, Rep. Peter King and former Reps. Guy Molinari and Susan Molinari.

His closest opponent, Mitt Romney, attended the funeral of Mormon church president Gordon B. Hinckley in Utah yesterday before campaigning in Minnesota. He also won last night's Maine caucuses, although both the state's senators declared support for McCain. With 47 percent of the towns with caucuses counted, Romney had 53 percent to McCain's 21 percent.

With McCain's GOP rivals - Romney, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Texas Rep. Ron Paul - essentially conceding New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware and Arizona to him, he was free to spend the day in Huckabee's probable regions of strength - Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia. All are home to evangelical voters slow to swing behind McCain.

Huckabee campaigned in Alabama, taking thinly veiled swipes at McCain and Romney.

Despite his front-runner status, McCain still has work wooing conservatives. A significant number remain vocally opposed to him and Romney hopes to take advantage of their unwillingness to back a longtime party maverick. But McCain said yesterday: "I believe that the majority of Republican Party conservatives are convinced that I'm best equipped to lead this country, unify our party and take on the challenge of radical Islamic extremism."

This story was supplemented with an Associated Press report.