This is starting to get embarrassing:
In a Saginaw high school, he said: "You saw 'Star Wars,' right? I'm just like Luke Skywalker trying to get out of the Death Star. I'm telling you, they're shooting at me from everywhere. Everybody's against me. (Michigan) Governor (John) Engler, Governor Bush, all the governors, all the senators.
Um, in Star Wars, the Senators were the good guys fighting Darth.
foxnews.com
McCain Attacks on Bush Get Wilder in Michigan
5.03 p.m. ET (2213 GMT) February 21, 2000
DETROIT — Arizona Sen. John McCain, in attacks that became progressively wilder on Monday, accused rival George W. Bush of "character assassination,'' as the two campaigned in Michigan ahead of Tuesday's Republican presidential primary.
Bush, the governor of Texas and son of former President George Bush, seemed confident of winning Tuesday's vote and mostly ignored his rival.
A Reuters/Zogby poll issued late on Sunday showed the race in Michigan a virtual dead heat. McCain led by a statistically insignificant two-percentage point margin but when undecided voters were asked which way they leaned, the result was a 44 percent to 44 percent tie.
Most political analysts expected Bush to get a bounce from his 11-point victory over McCain in Saturday's South Carolina primary but it was not apparent in the Sunday poll.
Reuters will issue another poll on Monday evening.
McCain badly needs to recoup from his setback in South Carolina, which put Bush back in the driver's seat in the race for the
Republican presidential nomination. Arizona is also holding a primary on Tuesday but it is assumed McCain will carry his home
state.
At a town hall meeting in Traverse City in upstate Michigan, McCain accused Bush of "character assassination.''
"My friends,'' he said, "reject this negative campaigning, reject this character assassination, reject the low road to the presidency and support those who want to take the high road. You deserve a lot better than the trash that's on your television set and over the radio.''
MCCAIN RHETORIC HEATS UP
As the day went on, and McCain went from rally to rally, his rhetoric became more and more heated.
In a Saginaw high school, he said: "You saw 'Star Wars,' right? I'm just like Luke Skywalker trying to get out of the Death Star. I'm telling you, they're shooting at me from everywhere. Everybody's against me. (Michigan) Governor (John) Engler, Governor Bush, all the governors, all the senators.
"But we're going to kill 'em, right? We're going to get 'em. I'm getting out of that Death Star, and we're going to win this election!'' he said.
Asked if this was an appropriate comment, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said: "I'm sure he means that metaphorically.''
McCain, a former Navy pilot who spent 5-1/2 years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, has based his insurgent campaign on a pledge to reform government by breaking the "iron triangle'' that he says dominates and corrupts U.S. politics — lobbyists, special interests and legislation.
But Bush said McCain had few credentials to pose as a reformer.
"He (McCain) talks of the iron triangle in Washington, D.C., but he's been ringing that iron triangle like a dinner bell,'' the Texas governor told reporters on Monday.
In South Carolina, Bush argued that McCain had taken big money from industries and interests that had business before the Senate Commerce Committee, which he chairs.
That was the only jab Bush directed at McCain on a day when he seemed to be looking past Michigan to the day he would take the Republican nomination and face the Democratic nominee, likely to be Vice President Al Gore, in the presidential election in November.
At each of his rallies, Bush counted down the days until ''the end of the Clinton-Gore era in Washington, D.C.,'' a line greeted with cheers and foot stomping.
DELEGATES MOUNT
Following the South Carolina result, Bush had 66 delegates to the Republican National Convention, where 1,035 will be needed to win the presidential nomination, and McCain had 13.
The winner of Michigan will take 58 more delegates while 30 are at stake in Arizona. Both states operate a ''winner-takes-all'' system.
After the Michigan and Arizona votes, Bush is favored to win on Feb. 29 in Virginia and North Dakota — states where McCain has not campaigned.
The big showdown comes on March 7 when California, New York, Ohio and a dozen other states hold primaries. But if McCain loses Michigan, his fund raising may dry up, leaving Bush with a huge money advantage leading up to that test.
"McCain has about $8 million available to him. Bush has somewhere around $20 million.... But a loss in Michigan might mean that, for all intents and purposes, whatever McCain has got is all he's going to have,'' said Republican political consultant Rich Galen.
Bush is supported by Michigan's governor and virtually the entire Republican Party establishment. Bush said on Monday that support would make all the difference.
But the primary is open to Democrats and independent voters as well, giving McCain some hope. Additionally, up to 35 percent of those who vote may be Catholic.
Some Catholics were offended by Bush's visit in South Carolina to Bob Jones University, a Christian fundamentalist college that bans interracial dating and is militantly anti-Catholic.
McCain reached out to those voters in an NBC interview.
"I'd have gone to Bob Jones University, but I'd have looked them straight in the face and said, 'You guys better get into modern times and do away with this disgraceful policy of yours, banning interracial dating, and your attacks on the Pope and Catholics,''' he said.
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