INCINNATI - To be sure, Governor George W. Bush was beaming yesterday afternoon, relieved to hear early news of his solid victory in the Virginia primary.
''Finally,'' Bush said, breaking into a grin, after an aide whispered the first poll results in his ear shortly after 2 p.m.
But the victory did not alter the strange reality Bush faced: Despite his early message of ''compassionate conservatism,'' the Texas governor had been cast by his opponent as a captive of the right-wing establishment, narrow-minded, and even bigoted on issues of religion and race.
Even before learning he had swept all three of yesterday's primaries, Bush appeared to be shifting his strategy to overcome the damage of those attacks by Senator John McCain. Bush still called himself a ''reformer with results'' - the slogan developed after his New Hampshire primary loss. He still blamed McCain for being divisive. But after suffering withering attacks on his ability to attract a wide spectrum of support, Bush seemed to be refocusing on the part of his campaign that made him seem so electable early on: his mantra of inclusion.
And after winning in Washington, Virginia, and North Dakota, his greatest show of force thus far in the Republican primary, Bush is better positioned than ever to begin focusing on that message as part of a general election race.
Visiting a half-built Catholic Charities center in Ohio, Bush talked yesterday about the ''mosaic'' of religions that make up the charitable community. He recalled a visit to a hospital run by evangelical Christians. He talked about the roles of ''Christians, Muslims, and Jewish people'' in the volunteer world. He was photographed with a Catholic priest.
Three weeks after his fateful visit to Bob Jones University, Bush appeared poised to prove his ''inclusiveness'' above all else in the weeks to come. A senior aide said Bush plans to emphasize two issues: faith-based organizations and education. Neither is new. Rather, both are pillars of the original Bush platform that, with time, have been overshadowed by other debates.
They are now top priority, Bush communications director Karen Hughes said, as issues that ''show his heart.''
But they are also part of a larger message that McCain ripped out from under Bush, stunning the Texan's campaign staff and supporters, many of whom believed Bush could beat a Democrat in the general election precisely because of the unifying quality he seemed to possess.
Bush became the early favorite in part because of his relatively inclusive message. Conversant in Spanish, he came into the primary with the promise of luring Hispanic voters. After winning nearly 30 percent of the black vote in his second gubernatorial race, Bush offered the hope of attracting black voters from the Democrats, too. He even defused the abortion issue, garnering support from foes of abortion even as he refused to promise to appoint only antiabortion judges to the Supreme Court.
In a few swift weeks, however, McCain had changed the debate from whether Bush was inclusive to whether he was bigoted. Using Bush's Feb. 2 visit to Bob Jones University, a South Carolina college that forbids interracial dating and whose leaders consider Catholicism a cult, as a symbol of everything voters needed to know about Bush, McCain painted a new, closed-minded picture of the Texas governor.
McCain argued Bush was too narrow-minded to win the White House against a Democrat. And Bush, confident his record would speak for itself, did little more than say McCain was wrong.
''The real irony is, he's the one who's been inclusive all along,'' said Representative John Kasich, the Ohio Republican who abandoned his own presidential aspirations last summer and supports Bush. ''The reason I decided to support him was his inclusiveness. I love his message of inclusion.''
Bush still faces hurdles in returning to that message and overcoming the damage of his Bob Jones appearance, which would almost certainly be raised again in a general election race.
But Bush seemed intent on seizing the message of inclusiveness again. Claiming victory in the Virginia primary before some 600 supporters, Bush heralded the electorate for ''rejecting the politics of pitting one religion against another.''
''This campaign is winning, and we're doing it the right way,'' Bush said. ''We are uniting our party without compromising principle.''
