John Mccain

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney said Friday that evangelicals who are inclined to back rival Mike Huckabee would be wasting their votes and handing the party nomination to a "liberal," John McCain. Evangelicals can "vote for Mike Huckabee and feel good about their vote," the former governor of Massachusetts told a Missouri TV station.

The growing likelihood that Sen. John McCain will win the Republican presidential nomination has sparked renewed debate between the Democratic front-runners over the Iraq war -- and over who possesses the strongest credentials to challenge a war hero for the duties of commander in chief. The issue provoked one of the sharpest moments in Thursday's Democratic debate in Los Angeles, as Sen.

John McCain was in his element: a crowded town-hall meeting in an open-air Fort Myers, Fla., seafood restaurant. He strolled from one side of the room to the other with a microphone in one hand, jabbing his finger in the air as he called for honorable victory in Iraq and better veterans healthcare. When a heckler shouted "4,000 American dead!" and "Bring them home!" McCain paused and asked him to wait his turn.

On Sept. 19, 2000, John McCain rose in the Senate to rail against what he called the "staggering" sums that the federal government planned to spend to help Salt Lake City stage the 2002 Winter Olympics. "The American taxpayer is being shaken down to the tune of nearly a billion and a half dollars," McCain said. The Arizona Republican vowed to "do everything in my power" to delay or kill "this pork-barrel spending" and to end the "fiscal abuse" related to the Olympics.

Of course, first there's the minor hurdle for Sen. John McCain of winning the presidential nomination of his Republican Party. There still are a few other party members -- like Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and even Ron Paul -- who think they should be the nominee. But just in case the delegate winner is John McCain and just in case the question comes up again later this winter, Sen.

Sen. John McCain's run for the presidency is gaining momentum across the nation, but the campaign is meeting disapproval in one of the most unlikely places: his home turf in Arizona. In a straw poll vote two weeks ago of 721 Republican leaders in Maricopa County, the major population center of the state, a majority ranked McCain as the least acceptable Republican candidate for president. The reason, Republicans say, is his record on illegal immigration.

On behalf of John McCain, Tom Kuypers does his best. Addressing three dozen of his fellow members of the Pachyderm Club, a Republican organization that met Friday in the back room of a Golden Corral restaurant here, Kuypers, 69, talked movingly about McCain's service in Vietnam. Flashing polling data he found on the Internet, he argued that McCain had the best chance of winning the general election.

John McCain rolled to victory in big-state primaries across the nation Tuesday, but rivals Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney notched enough wins to keep the race for the Republican nomination alive. McCain won primaries in California, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Missouri, Delaware, Illinois, Oklahoma and Arizona, his home state. Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor who has appealed above all to white evangelicals, beat expectations across a large stretch of the Bible Belt.