HILADELPHIA - The middle initial in George W. Bush's name used to stand for Walker. This week, it stands for Women.
Across the floor of the Republican National Convention, delegates wave posters and sport buttons that say ''W is for Women.'' But those visual aids aren't really necessary, because almost everything about the 2000 GOP gathering - the women speakers, the videos filled with children, the compassionate themes repeated again and again at the podium - is aimed at women voters.
It is a huge contrast to past GOP conventions, when Republicans let the angry rhetoric of cultural warriors, pro-gun militants, defense hawks, and abortion opponents set the party's tone. It scared off many women, pollsters said, and it helped create the gender gap that elected Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996.
''This is a new Republican Party,'' Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who studies gender voting, said this week. ''There has never been a Republican leader who understands the targeting of women the way George W. Bush does. If anybody can capture the women's vote, he can.''
Lake's latest poll shows Bush and Democrat Al Gore in a statistical dead heat among women voters. With Bush 16 points ahead among male voters in the same poll, the wooing of women has become the central mission of both campaigns.
The Republican convention is a national showcase for Bush, and he is not missing an opportunity on any of its four nights to demonstrate he is both an advocate for women's concerns, from education to health care to Social Security, and a man at ease with strong, smart women.
It was a calculated move by the campaign to have Laura Bush, a former librarian and elementary school teacher, tout her commitment to early-childhood education during a warm testimonial to her husband on the convention's opening night. Tuesday night, it was Barbara Bush - not the former president - who introduced their son and welcomed the conventioneers to Philadelphia, which she quipped was ''the city of motherly love.''
Bush's main purpose, in remarks beamed in by satellite from Gettysburg, Pa., was to set the stage for two more accomplished, prime-time convention speakers: Condoleezza Rice, whom Bush described as ''a brilliant woman and my chief foreign-policy adviser,'' and Elizabeth Dole, the two-time Cabinet secretary who Bush said was a ''a pioneer and a role model for so many of our daughters.''
Dole made sure her national-security speech touched women when she said, ''Freedom empowers the heart. It levels walls and shatters ceilings, including glass ceilings.''
Last night, the feminization of GOP politics continued, as two single mothers, a female farmer, and a 30-year-old woman who is a successful high-tech entrepreneur joined what has been a weeklong cavalcade of women speakers extolling the Republican Party's positive, caring public policies. Lynne Cheney, wife of vice presidential candidate Dick Cheney, spoke affectionately of her husband as a ''fabulous father'' and a husband who demonstrated that ''cooking is an honorable male occupation.''
On stage this week, the most visible members of the unpopular GOP Congress have been the convention co-chairs, Representatives Jennifer Dunn, a moderate from Washington state, and J.C. Watts of Oklahoma, a black man. Two confrontational figures of the House leadership - Representatives Dick Armey and Tom DeLay of Texas - have kept to a backstage role.
''When women look at George Bush and Dick Cheney, they don't see a harsh conservative, which has been the face of the Republican Congress,'' said Linda DiVall, a Republican pollster and strategist. ''They see the face of conservatism that is much more optimistic and, quite frankly, one that will not dismantle government programs at every stage and every opportunity.''
The convention message and messengers are very much in sync with what pollsters know about women voters: They like civil politics, moral leadership, and effective government. They worry most about the economic and physical security of their families, educational opportunities for their children, and the pressures of juggling tasks at work and home.
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a political analyst at the Annenberg Center for Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, said the convention's theme, ''Renewing America's Purpose. Together,'' sends a strong signal to moderate women voters that the GOP is inclusive and concerned about children and families.
''The theme is symbolically consistent and very well executed,'' Jamieson said.
But is it sincere? Marie Wilson, who heads the White House Project, a nonprofit group trying to promote women for high elective offices, said she fears women have become ''vote objects'' for the major political parties.
''I am concerned that both parties are looking at women as vote objects rather than real partners in democracy and governing,'' Wilson said.
Indeed, Republican women who support gun control, federal family-planning programs, and abortion rights say the party platform crafted by Bush and approved by the convention Monday does not reflect the image of a kinder, gentler GOP. Some say Bush has not reassured women with his running mate choice of Cheney, who as a congressman voted against the Equal Rights Amendment, the Clean Water Act, and federal funds for Head Start.
''In the choices George W. Bush is making, he is showing us what he believes and what is important,'' said Doris Wilson of Washington, D.C., a Republican vice president of the National Women's Political Caucus. ''And women aren't really important.''
Women delegates, many who have been working in the GOP for years, insist something new is afoot - a tone, an attitude, a unity driven by an overwhelming desire to find a way to win in November.
''This is better than it has ever been for women, and it is not just words and rhetoric,'' said Sue Anne Gilroy, Indiana's Republican secretary of state.
This marks the fourth convention that June Hartley, Oregon's national GOP committeewoman, has attended, and none has been as upbeat as this one, she said. She likes Bush's integrity and experience, and she isn't concerned that as a woman, she disagrees with some of his stands.
''My mother always said, `If a man agrees with you 100 percent of the time, he is either henpecked or not very smart,''' Hartley said.
