Head Strong: A Republican who can win in Pa.

Eleven months ago, I wrote here that the key for Republicans to win Pennsylvania and the White House in 2008 was to focus on suburbanites who wanted a hawk on terror but a moderate on social issues.

"GOP presidential candidates need to focus on surviving primaries and winning the general election, not vice versa," I wrote.

John McCain is such a candidate, and he will be a formidable opponent for Barack Obama or Hillary Rodham Clinton - notwithstanding the daily barrage he is enduring from conservative voices. In fact, I'm starting to think their criticism helps him by accentuating his platform.

Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck, three of the biggest talkers in the nation, are among those outwardly apoplectic about McCain's success. Another conservative, James Dobson of Focus on the Family, has even said he won't vote for president at all as "a matter of conscience" if McCain wins the nomination.

Conservative criticism of McCain aims at his stance on illegal immigration, his close relationship with Edward M. Kennedy, his opposition to the Bush tax cuts, his desire to close Guantanamo, his embrace of global warming, and his (perceived) defiance of the First Amendment on campaign-finance legislation. All of which, we're told, makes him no Ronald Reagan.

Ironically, a full year ago, at the National Constitution Center, I asked McCain whether he was a Reagan conservative, and he told me: "Was Ronald Reagan a rigid ideologue? No - I think if you look at his record when he was governor of California, he even raised taxes. But he had a vision. He had a vision grounded in good fundamental conservative principles and an optimistic vision of the future and an unshakable faith in America and its citizens, in the unique role we played in history and will continue to play."

Look: McCain's brand of Reaganism could return Pennsylvania to the GOP fold for the first time since 1988, when George H.W. Bush carried the commonwealth. In the intervening 20 years, the Republican Party has lost its hold on the Philadelphia suburbs. Why? The national political pendulum swung after 12 straight Reagan/Bush years, Democratic voters continued to flee Philadelphia for the suburbs, and the Democratic Party built solid organizations and gained traction in those counties. Consider that in Montgomery County, which in the 1980s was a well-oiled Republican machine, Democrats just won five of the nine row offices.

Karl Rove sought to stoke the more conservative GOP base in central Pennsylvania and the upper tier (the so-called conservative "T") of the state by relying on wedge issues. But that strategy didn't deliver a win for Bush in 2000 or 2004, nor do I think it would win in 2008. For every extra voter who gets pulled out of conservative enclaves in central Pennsylvania through wedge-issue rhetoric, the Democrats will continue to pull out an extra vote or two in Philadelphia and its nearby suburbs.

Instead, I say, the GOP needs to concentrate on appealing to Philadelphia suburbanites on common ground. Incidentally, last month I offered my thinking to Rove himself, and he said: "To win Pennsylvania as a Republican presidential candidate, you've got to do three things. You've got to drive up the Republican turnout in the T. You've got to eat into the Democrat numbers in Allegheny County and Southwest Pa. And you need to maximize your vote in the collar suburbs, the inner suburbs there around Philadelphia.

"The Republican candidate who wins Pennsylvania this year is going to be the candidate who can do not just one thing - maximize the Republican vote in the suburbs - but do all three things."

If John McCain wants to win Pennsylvania, he needs to maintain his maverick status. His independence and moderation on social issues may draw Rush Limbaugh's ire, but it's exactly what may enable him to appeal to some of the voters who sent Patrick Murphy to replace Mike Fitzpatrick in the House, and Bob Casey to relieve Rick Santorum in the U.S. Senate. They are the same voters who have been returning Arlen Specter to the Senate since 1980 and are comfortable voting for Ed Rendell regardless of party affiliation. These voters do not share in the conservative condemnation of McCain. To the contrary, they will appreciate that he isn't running for president on an ideological platform.

Which is why I believe the conservative blasting of McCain is good publicity around here.

Come to think of it, maybe the conservatives have this all figured out and realize McCain is their only hope in thwarting their archenemy, Hillary Clinton. I needed to know. So the morning after Super Tuesday, tongue planted firmly in cheek, I called Sean Hannity at home and told him I was wise to the cabal. I said I suspected he'd had dinner with Rush at Patsy's Italian Restaurant in New York and, united in their hatred for Hillary, decided the only way to deny her the White House was to overlook McCain's shortcomings and unite behind his candidacy because of his appeal to independents. How best to do that? By calling attention to his liberal votes in a mock bid to do him political harm.

Hannity, of course, told me I was crazy. He then said if it happened, it would have begun at Ruth's Chris Steak House - not Patsy's.

Which, come to think of it, was not an outright denial.