John McCain turns right

A NASCAR driver makes only left turns. A moderate Republican who wants to be his party's presidential nominee, on the other hand, makes only right turns.

Hard right turns.

Otherwise, John McCain - father of campaign finance reform, gun control advocate, issuer of dire warnings about global warming - wouldn't be in Ohio Tuesday campaigning for the likes of Steve Chabot and J. Kenneth Blackwell, neither of whom has ever been accused as being a card-carrying member of the Republican party's "moderate wing.''

McCain is clearly on a nationwide campaign to convince the right wing of his party that he doesn't have horns growing out of the side of his head. He has been careening across the country touting conservative candidates who, for the most part, were on the Bush bandwagon six years ago, the last time McCain ran for the GOP nomination.

So, today, he brings his campaign to Ohio, where conservative Republican primary voters may have a lot to say about who the the GOP presidential candidate is two years from now.

He'll appear first at a Chabot fundraiser in downtown Cincinnati and then dart off to Cleveland for a late afternoon event with Blackwell, the gubernatorial candidate who is the favorite of the evangelicals whose brothers and sisters down south sunk McCain's presidential campaign in 2000.

Six years ago, McCain barnstormed Ohio during the presidential primary in his famous campaign bus, The Straight Talk Express, in a futile attempt to stop George W. Bush.

Since then, The Straight Talk Express clearly has had its steering column tampered with.