McCain, Bush alliance 'uneasy'
05/03/2008 11:06  - (SA)  

Huckabee drops out of race Obama, McCain clash over Iraq McCain slams 'smear campaign' Obama, McCain win in Wisconsin Bush snr backs McCain

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Washington - When John McCain breaks bread with President George W Bush at the White House on Wednesday, the Republican nominee will forge an uneasy alliance with his one-time foe.

Bush was expected to endorse the new Republican standard-bearer, eight years after the two fought in their own bitter race for the party's presidential nomination marked by a smear campaign that contributed to McCain's defeat.

As the two campaigned in race-conscious South Carolina in 2000, the Arizona senator faced false allegations that he had fathered an illegitimate black child. The Bush campaign denied ever being the source of the anonymous claims.

But McCain went on to endorse Bush's 2004 re-election campaign, famously embracing him at rally in a sign that they had put their quarrels behind.

McCain later became one of the staunchest supporters of the unpopular president's troop surge strategy in Iraq after criticising the Bush administration's handling of the war.

He vowed in his victory speech on Tuesday after securing the Republican nomination that he would fight to win the war in Iraq as he slammed his potential Democratic foes in the November election, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Tough decisions

"I will defend the decision to destroy Saddam Hussein's regime (in Iraq) as I criticised the failed tactics that were employed for too long to establish the conditions that will allow us to leave that country with our country's interests secure and our honour intact," he said.

The presumptive Republican nominee has also made a turnabout on Bush's tax cuts, which he once criticised as excessive. Moreover, McCain has surrounded himself with advisers of Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns.

Despite his rapprochement with Bush, the 71-year-old White House hopeful faces a tough decision about how much he wants to be seen embracing the president, whose approval rating has hovered at about 30%.

Democrats, who are locked in a tight race between Clinton and Obama, have made it clear that they would use the McCain-Bush alliance as a rallying point against the Republican nominee.

While Bush could help him win support of conservatives suspicious of his commitment to their core values, their alliance could turn off independents tired of nearly five years of war in Iraq.

The New York Times reported last month that McCain's campaign advisers will ask the White House to send Bush to Republican fundraisers but that they do not want the president to make too many public appearances with the candidate.

'A true conservative'

But Bush was scheduled to welcome McCain at the White House on Wednesday for a lunch before addressing the media alongside the Republican candidate, to whom he hopes to hand the keys to the Oval Office in January 2009.

Bush has indicated he would help McCain woo wary conservatives, although he acknowledged that the senator still had to prove his conservative bona fides.

"I know him well. I know his convictions. I know the principles that drive him. And no doubt in my mind he's a true conservative," Bush said in a Fox News interview in February.

"I think that if John's the nominee, he has got some convincing to do to convince people that he is a solid conservative," he added. "And I'll be glad to help him if he's the nominee."

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