GOP Hopefuls To Rumble In L.A. Thursday
McCain Reaches Out To Vietnamese, Comes Under Fire From Bush, Bauer
The Arizona senator was also coming under a crossfire from Bush, who called McCain's education plan insubstantial, and former presidential candidate Gary Bauer, who said McCain had gone overboard in criticizing religious conservative leaders Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell.
Bush and Alan Keyes were to be in Los Angeles for the hourling debate Thursday evening, to be broadcast on CNN and some public radio stations at 9 p.m. Eastern time/6 p.m. Pacific, while McCain plans to appear via satellite from St. Louis.
The self-styled maverick was in the Los Angeles area in the flesh Wednesday when he "reunited" with supporters of Vietnamese descent.
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McCain receives both cheers and jeers from Vietnamese-
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McCain spoke to a boisterous crowd of more than 1,000 supporters of his campaign from the Vietnamese community. The emotional reunion included Vietnamese soldiers who were formerly prisoners, some of whom McCain helped to free.
McCain said that his nearly six years as a prisoner of war "was the defining period of my life," and he pledged to work for a memorial in Vietnam to Vietnamese soldiers who died during the war.
"I promise you that will be my goal," McCain said.
Earlier Wednesday, McCain said that Vietnamese-Americans have been "wonderful to me" and noted his involvement in such projects as normalization of relations and aiding in immigration from Vietnam.
But there has been some criticism of McCain in the Asian-American community because of his use of the word "gook" to refer to Vietnamese guards who abused him during his five years as a prisoner of war.
Before McCain made his campaign speech in front of the Asian Garden Mall on Bolsa Avenue Wednesday evening, several Asian-American college students wearing T-shirts that read "American Gook" protested in the parking lot, calling McCain a racist.
"They don't understand. People have died because they were a gook. I look just like a gook. But I am not a communist. They can't use that word towards me," Dao Nguyen told our sister Web site Channel 2000.
The protesters were shoved off the site by angry supporters, who shouted out, "Communists!" toward the protesters.
Some students were arrested, according to Channel 2000.
McCain has said he was referring only to vicious prison guards and not to Asians as a group, and has said he is sorry if his remarks caused offense.
McCain said he would not explain himself further, saying, "There's no need to."
He also has insisted that Vietnamese-Americans understand his meanings clearly, because many have had similar experiences.
"Many of those people are in this country because he helped them and they understand," McCain spokesman Todd Harris said. "Everywhere we go in the Vietnamese community, we see people holding up signs thanking him for what he's done."
In addition, Harris argued that McCain's use of language reflected the time when he was a prisoner in the 1960s and early 1970s.
"Many of the people he served with used similar language," Harris said. "He was referring to a group of very, very bad people. ... People who fled Vietnam to this country certainly understand that."
McCain's Religious Problems
McCain continued to face repercussions from his his Virginia Beach speech attacking Robertson and Falwell as ''agents of intolerance.'' He's been hoping that the speech, delivered near the home of the Christian Coalition, will serve him well among moderate Republicans in less conservative states.Bauer, the social conservative who endorsed McCain shortly after ending his own bid for the GOP presidential nomination, said Wednesday that McCain should apologize for the ''ill-advised and divisive'' speech that compared the religious leaders to activists Louis Farrakhan and Al Sharpton, divisive figures on the left. McCain refused but did express regret for jokingly suggesting on his campaign bus that Falwell and Robertson were among ''the forces of evil.''
''I stand by the speech,'' McCain said. ''I did not and will not retract anything I said in that speech.''
But McCain said his references on the campaign bus to ''evil'' in the religious right leadership was a misguided attempt at humor, akin to his frequent ''Star Wars'' references.
''I did not say or mean to say they are evil,'' he said. ''Sometimes when you're on a bus for a couple of hours people don't understand things the way you mean them.''
Falwell weighed in with charitable words on McCain's behalf.
''I personally think that the senator in a moment of frustration said things that he normally would not say,'' Falwell told Roanoke, Va., TV station WSLS. ''And it's out of character for him to be that way.''
Falwell said McCain got bad campaign advice. ''I don't believe John McCain is a bigot or hates Christians or hates anybody,'' Falwell said.
McCain also faced criticism Thursday from prison evangelist Charles Colson, whom McCain praised in a controversial speech.
In an opinion piece in The New York Times Thursday, Colson said that by ''exploiting'' Bush's visit to Bob Jones University to gain Catholic votes, McCain abetted Democrats who want to ''drive a wedge'' between Catholics and evangelical Protestants.
Bush Bullish
An increasingly confident Bush predicted yet another round of victories and worked to create a sense of inevitability.''When I'm the nominee, I'm going to set the tone for the party,'' Bush said. ''That's what a leader does.''
McCain dismissed predictions of almost any sort in this wild and woolly primary campaign -- including his own.
''Every prediction so far has been wrong, including mine,'' he said. ''My predictions are not totally worthless, but next to it.''
But he conceded that his campaign got sidetracked in recent days and said it's time to get back to issues.
''I'm going to focus on that rather than respond to continued assaults on my character,'' he said. ''The people of this country deserve a campaign that's based on the issues.''
Bush previewed a new line, attacking McCain for being vague on education.
''It's not going to take you long to hear his (plan),'' Bush said at a Missouri rally. ''There's not much to my opponent's -- with all due respect.''
Bush has a detailed plan to use federal education aid to reward and penalize states according to how students perform on standardized tests, including a national sampling exam.
He hasn't been too keen lately to emphasize the strong federal role that his plan would allow, insisting that he's for local control of schools.
McCain's education platform is not so involved: It stresses ''no strings'' money to schools.
The candidates were preparing for their final debate before Super Tuesday, when voters in 13 states choose Republican delegates. California is the largest prize.
''We are closing by about a point or two a day here in California,'' McCain said of polls. Bush pointed to his sweep this week in Virginia, North Dakota and Washington state as ''a sign of what's going to happen in California next week.''
Polls indicate that McCain is strong in the New England states and highly competitive in New York.
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