WASHINGTON — Sen. John McCain slid this winter from presumed favorite to beleaguered underdog in the Republican presidential contest. He retooled his campaign in hopes of a comeback. But now he faces a distressing question that few would have posed just months ago: Will he even be able to stay in the race?
From both right and left, McCain's challenges have mounted.
His push to overhaul immigration laws, which collapsed in Congress this week, has stirred a fierce conservative backlash. That widening breach with conservatives has helped rivals Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson advance.
At the same time, Rudolph W. Giuliani's recent dip in the polls has been too slight to help McCain; the former New York mayor still undercuts the Arizona senator's onetime base of support among moderates.
The robust competition also has stoked doubts about McCain's general-election viability, already in question because of his outspoken support of President Bush's unpopular troop buildup in Iraq.
It is a tough cycle for McCain to break. And another turn for the worse may loom.
His opponents' strength, and his own continuing weaknesses, have made it harder for the senator to recover from early trouble raising money. And those cash problems could deteriorate further if McCain fails to show a fundraising rebound for the three-month reporting period that closes today.
Many who saw him last year as the favorite for the GOP nod now view his White House bid as "flat-out dead," Stuart Rothenberg, a nonpartisan election analyst, wrote this week in Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newsletter.
"They aren't saying it's tough for him to win the Republican nomination or that he's an underdog. They are saying he is finished. Kaput," Rothenberg wrote.
Still, it remains too soon to completely write off McCain, Rothenberg added.
Recent history provides a reason for caution. The 2004 White House bid by Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts was widely seen as wiped out just weeks before he won the Iowa caucuses, a victory that propelled him to the Democratic nomination.
McCain told reporters this week that his campaign was "doing fine," but he conceded that he was having a "very difficult" time raising money. He also said it would be "nuts" to drop out of the race six months before voters start casting ballots.
That McCain would even confront the possibility reflects the sheer weight of grim developments that have beset his campaign.
