From the Right, Both Acceptance and Distrust of McCain

Some Unease Lingers Despite Big Victories by Front-Runner

NASHVILLE (Washington Post) - Ronald Reagan has found a regular place in Sen. John McCain's stump speech, part of the Republican presidential candidate's effort to assert his conservative credentials and assure listeners that he has been a longtime "foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution."

Tre Everson, a local funeral director, listened carefully last weekend as McCain (Ariz.) appeared to be channeling Reagan in a campaign appearance here aimed at assuaging the worries of conservatives. McCain said he wants only judges who will "stand up for the strict construction of the Constitution," and repeated that he is "a proud social conservative . . . the true conservative."

Everson comes from that part of the Republican electorate congenitally suspicious of McCain -- passionate conservatives who view him as a closet moderate on fiscal and social matters, and want nothing to do with the Republican front-runner. But McCain has succeeded in easing Everson's worries about his controversial stance on immigration, which offered the prospect of citizenship to illegal immigrants, by stressing that he would "secure the borders first."