WASHINGTON (By Dan Nowicki, Arizona Republic) February 17, 2007 — Sen. John McCain has come a long way from his long-shot presidential campaign in 2000, when his challenge to the GOP establishment had moderate Republicans, independents and even some Democrats cheering.

Now a leading contender, the Republican Arizona senator has a big target on his back. And Democrats, independents and Republicans are taking aim.

To a degree, McCain has made himself an easy mark: He arguably has done more to make the case for the unpopular plan to send more troops to Iraq than anybody, including President Bush.

But it's more than his stance on the Iraq war. Unlike his leading rivals, who have yet to take strong, public stands on significant issues, McCain has been outspoken on the most volatile of topics, from immigration to defense spending.

Compare him with former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney: Both support the president on the war, but most Americans probably couldn't recite their positions on Iraq without looking them up, said Charlie Cook, a nonpartisan political analyst and founder of the Washington, D.C.-based Cook Political Report.

The same is true of their stands on other top issues. And although both Giuliani and Romney are former elected officials, they do not have records of votes and speeches on as broad a range of issues as McCain.

"Being a senator is particularly dangerous because there's nobody in the world easier to do opposition research on than a U.S. senator," said John Pitney Jr., a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College in California and a former GOP staffer. "And it's all accessible online. Researching a mayor, there's a lot that's on the public record, but you need to know a lot about New York City in order to get at it."

'Political risk'

McCain's unique vulnerabilities include an establishment-style 2008 Republican White House effort that contrasts sharply with his 2000 presidential campaign.

The Democratic swipes at McCain are a pre-emptive strike on his reputation as a centrist, said Jaime Molera, a Phoenix-based Republican political consultant.

"I think it's going to be tough to convince most people that McCain is out of the mainstream," said Molera, a senior adviser to Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl's 2006 re-election campaign. "That's why they're starting that process now instead of waiting a year."

Luis Miranda, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, says McCain brings the criticism upon himself by hiring controversial political figures such as Terry Nelson, his exploratory committee's campaign manager, and for pandering to far-right segments of the GOP base that he alienated in 2000.

"The harder McCain tries to reach conservatives, the less they trust him and the more he loses the independents and moderates that he needs to win," Miranda said.

On ABC News' This Week, on Sunday, McCain defended his hiring of people involved in ads that attacked Democratic nominee John Kerry in 2004 and himself in 2000.

"They are all good people, otherwise I wouldn't hire them."

Democrats already have an eye on McCain's Senate votes. McCain missed Monday's vote in which Republicans stifled a resolution expressing opposition to the Iraq troop surge. He was traveling. The DNC accused him of putting presidential ambitions above the war.

"The last time a U.S. senator was elected president was in 1960," said Kyle Longley, a professor of history at Arizona State University. "They can go back and pull votes from 20 years ago. His position may have changed, but they've got him on the record. That's why it's so difficult for a U.S. senator to win."

Democrats are unlikely to lay off.

"When you're attacking the surge, you're doing something that's enormously popular with the Democratic base, very popular with independents, and that's, frankly, something that even a lot of Republicans agree with," Cook said. "So why not?"