RAND RAPIDS, Mich. - This has nothing to do with who is ''negative'' and who is ''positive.'' Instead, it has everything to do with who is motivated.
What George W. Bush was able to show in South Carolina is that John McCain's candidacy is a reason for conservative Republicans to flock to the polls.
Awakened by that stunning success, McCain is trying to stay viable by performing a most difficult political feat - striking out in two directions at once without seeming to be flailing wildly or contradicting himself.
He is reminding voters here, as he decidedly did not in Dixie, that his own conservative credential are impeccable, from opposing abortion rights to battling gun control. But he is also asserting the validity of his reformer's credentials and ridiculing Bush's. What today's voting will decide is whether he is losing a moderate voter for every conservative he convinces.
The Texas governor, by contrast, has morphed again since his Saturday victory. From the proud conservative of South Carolina, he is once again the front-runner here, performing more of a victory lap than a campaign, proclaiming the end of ''Clinton-Gore'' more than the impending demise of McCain, happily in the embrace of almost the entire Republican establishment here, beginning with Gov. John Engler.
The one similarity to South Carolina, and it could be all Bush needs, is that he is again warning that ''they'' are trying to take over the Republican primary. In South Carolina it was a vague threat about Democrats; here, the Republicans from Bush on down have a visible foil in Democratic attorney Geoffrey Feiger (''Dr. Kevorkian's lawyer,'' as Bush refers to him), whom Engler crushed last year but who is using radio ads to promote McCain votes.
Feiger makes most Democrats cringe and all Republicans see red. The Bush approach lacks the intensity of South Carolina, which offered three weeks for the message to take hold - in contrast to Michigan's three news cycles - but it resonates nonetheless.
This part of Michigan, the west, is Bush country - the most conservative, the most intensely anti-abortion rights, the most pro-Engler. From Kalamazoo and Battle Creek to the south on up through here to Traverse City, a huge, motivated conservative vote would be more than enough to overcome less ideological McCain voting in the rest of the state.
And it is no accident that in addition to the proven attack ads from South Carolina, the Bush campaign is using surrogates - radio, e-mail, and flyers - to sell aggressively the notion that took hold among right wingers down South: McCain is not a reliable right-to-lifer, his 17-year record on that score notwithstanding.
But McCain has not shied away from Bush country. His state operation is based here, he has had the support of the local paper, and he showed the flag at the airport and at a town meeting up in Traverse City.
The question is whether his message in Michigan will help or complicate his uphill (despite the dead-heat polls) campaign. On the plus side, the big issue is the same big issue that dominated South Carolina - McCain. His campaigning has dominated the local news cycles thus far; Bush has risked appearing like the guy who lost New Hampshire, disdainful of his opponent and selling momentum.
The question is how voters will react to the McCain message. He has abandoned concern about who is and who isn't the negative campaigner. Instead he has gone after two major elements of the post-New Hampshire Bush persona - the reformer and the conservative.
McCain has attacked the idea that Bush's record supports his reformer's pose, above all on campaign donations. Noting that in all his time in Texas, where money flows without restriction, Bush has never made or supported a single reform, McCain has received considerable local coverage with his assertion that only tooth fairy-believers accept Bush's credentials.
He has also been noticed for his adoption of an old Steve Forbes line of attack: That government expenditures in Texas have soared under Bush's leadership far more rapidly than they have in Bill Clinton's Washington. In neither case, are the merits (McCain is correct) important; the only thing that counts is that his message has been covered in a compressed campaign where anything that's ''new'' helps get attention.
But McCain has also sold himself aggressively here as the Republican of the Right he has usually been in Congress - against abortion rights, gun control, and a higher minimum wage; and for less violent smut on television. He's coming through clear, but it remains to be seen if the guy who now travels with Gary Bauer in tow can continue to attract the Democrats and independents who still form his base of support.
McCain can never win without attracting more than the 25 percent he got in South Carolina from Republicans and conservatives; but if he raises those numbers here by reducing his appeal to non-Republicans, the effort will flop.
He's still the reformer, but his new line is: ''I'm a proud, conservative, pro-life, conservative Republican.''
