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David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, to McClatchy newspapers:

The Republicans arrive in Ohio with their presidential candidate pretty much picked. But they're not sure they're happy with him.

Indeed, going into the March 4 primary, the party is more passionately divided than the Democrats, who are still fighting about who their candidate should be.

Important voices are railing on talk shows and elsewhere about Sen. John McCain's allegedly un-Republican record. And they have a point.

Has fought Bush administration

Sen. McCain has not settled for occasional departures from the party line. After the 2000 election, he decided to fight the Bush administration regularly. He rejected the president's tax cuts and backed him into accepting campaign-spending laws. He worked with Democrats on a bill of rights for medical patients, on allowing importation of prescription drugs, on raising fuel efficiency standards and on the gun-show "loophole" in gun-control laws.

Listing these and more in The New Republic magazine (Feb. 27), journalist Jonathan Chait, who is not a conservative, says "During this crucial period, McCain was the most effective advocate of the Democratic agenda in Washington."

Things got to the point where the Democrats seriously considered Sen. McCain as John Kerry's running mate in 2004 (whether Sen. McCain ever took the idea seriously or not).

Sen. McCain had been more conservative before 2000, and he is becoming more conservative again. He spent some years calling himself a Teddy Roosevelt Republican. (President Roosevelt famously left the Republican Party because of its domination by conservatives.) But now Sen. McCain keeps saying that he came to Washington as a "foot soldier" in the Ronald Reagan conservative revolution.

These days, Sen. McCain wants to discuss mainly the Iraq war. On that, he has certainly been allied with the conservatives. But his constant harping on it suggests that he sees Iraq — not just the broader battle against terrorists — as what the future is all about.

Flaws and all, he is certainly a better choice than his last remaining opponents, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Rep. Ron Paul, of Texas.

Huckabee, Paul not in same league

Mr. Huckabee is the better public speaker and seems to have won a niche of the conservative vote: the evangelicals who focus on social issues, such as abortion (and don't seem to care much about their candidate's less conservative stances on economic issues).

But he has not demonstrated the depth to be president. He has naively signed onto the "fair tax," a half-baked scheme for eliminating income taxes. When he unwisely wandered into a discussion of foreign policy, he sounded a strange alarm about a problem that really isn't big: Pakistanis coming into this county over the Mexican border.

Mr. Paul has tapped into a small, but vocal, Internet-based school of libertarians. And he has apparently benefited from being the only Republican candidate against the Iraq war. He doesn't seem to really be running for president. His supporters talk more about building a movement.

Appeal extends beyond party

Even before the Republican field narrowed, it was remarkably weak, at least in terms of public appeal. Sen. McCain was able to make a comeback — after his campaign was widely declared dead — because no candidate was turning people on; Republican turnout has been consistently lower than Democratic.

But there is much to be said for John McCain. His service in Vietnam was remarkable. His political career has been, too. No get-along-go-along, cardboard cut-out, he seems born to leadership and independence. He has been in Washington for many years without losing his edge.

In a time when the Republican Party is in trouble with independent voters and has problems with its own base, the party is right to put up a man whose appeal has always extended beyond the party.

But Sen. McCain has a tough job. Can he placate the conservatives who distrust him, even as he holds the independents who have had such high hopes for him? Can he come out of the race with his reputation for independence intact?