OLUMBIA, S.C. - The Republican primary contest, in many ways a race to the right, has developed an unusual subplot: a contest that centers on one candidate, George W. Bush, whose ''compassionate conservatism'' is sometimes interpreted as code for moderation, and another, Senator John McCain, who is running on populist themes that often sound Democratic.
The two Democratic candidates, meanwhile, seem determined to outdo each other in appealing to the party's liberal wing on issues from gay rights to health care to abortion. Neither Vice President Al Gore nor former Senator Bill Bradley resists the liberal label, and both have increasingly eschewed the ''New Democrat'' moderate strategy that elected President Clinton.
These are some of the emerging fault lines of Campaign 2000, etched in the granite of the first primary state of New Hampshire, and underscored in South Carolina with its vital Feb. 19 vote. These lines have grown brighter and deeper, following a week of almost daily debates, and have given the campaign a fairly familiar shape: Republicans mostly talking tax cuts, Democrats arguing about ambitious, and costly, policy dreams.
But against that backdrop there is something that sets this political season apart: candidates are employing a degree of specificity about issues that is extraordinary so early in a presidential contest. This is particularly the case with the two Democrats, whose contest has, since midautumn, consisted largely a sustained debate - sometimes testy, often dense and baffling, but always serious and substantive - about health care.
There has been nothing quite like it on the GOP side. Still, in both parties it is the rare candidate without a detailed tax plan and a reasonably complete health care policy. It is a heartening trend to those who have long lamented the short-shrifting of substance in national campaigns, but there are political risks as well.
''Everybody always pushes each other to come out with specifics, but it will come back to dog them in the general election,'' said Dartmouth College professor of government Dean Spiliotes. ''When you are this specific so early, it is hard to sprint back to the middle in the general election.''
Just four years ago, Bob Dole waited until the summer before the national election to unveil his tax plan. But in the 2000 race, most of the Republican candidates have already made their tax proposals, with Gary Bauer last week ridiculing McCain for failing to produce a plan. McCain, in fact, plans to announce his tax program tomorrow.
On the Democratic side, Bradley's detailed health care plan has framed the debate and helped propel the former New Jersey senator into competitive status against Gore. By contrast, when Bill Clinton campaigned for president in 1992, he talked vaguely about health care and did not come up with a plan until after many months of study led by his wife.
Political analyst Stuart Rothenberg said that while Bradley and Gore have their differences, their policies are not as different as the candidates portray them. ''The major fault line in the race is still Bradley as the reformer, the outsider, the candidate of one or two big issues who will make a big impact, versus Gore, the candidate of the establishment, of Democratic constiuency groups, who is talking about how Bradley ran away from the party,'' Rothenberg said.
Already, some Republicans are rubbing their hands in glee at the sound bites from the debates that might be used against the Democratic nominee during the general election. But Republicans may have a similar problem. In Thursday's debate in Durham, N.H., George W. Bush all but promised never to raise taxes except in extraordinary cases such as financing a war. The comment was designed to have appeal in the antitax climate in New Hampshire and the Republican Party in general, but it also evoked memories of former President Bush, who broke his own ''read my lips, no new taxes'' vow. It does not take much imagination to envision a Democratic ad that quotes Bush's tax cut pledge and then replays the tape of his father's broken promise.
McCain, who has one of the most conservative voting records of any senator, repeatedly delivers populist, Democratic-sounding themes. In the debate here Friday night, he blasted Bush for a ''fiscally irresponsible'' tax cut plan that he said gives too much benefit to the rich, and called for an end to unregulated ''soft money'' contributions that disproportionately favor the Republican Party.
McCain is counting on his maverick agenda to have appeal in New Hampshire, where Independents may vote in either party primary, and in South Carolina, where Independents and Democrats can vote in the GOP primary. But it is far less clear how McCain's effort will fare among the party faithful, and his campaign could falter in states where only Republicans may participate in the GOP contest.
The other GOP candidates have tried to convince voters that Bush and McCain are abandoning the conservatives who normally determine the outcome of primaries. Alan Keyes, the uncompromisingly conservative talk show host and long-shot candidate, wondered aloud where the conservatives have gone. Steve Forbes's campaign manager Bill Dal Col yesterday summed up his candidate's strategy in five words: ''We are the conservative candidate.''
No candidate has dared for long the kind of campaign that emphasizes sweeping rhetoric, stinting on detail. And the major candidates have also, in various ways, paid a price. It is always easier to attack a political foe who details what he or she would do. McCain, for example, is plainly paying the price for specificity on his top issue, an overhaul of the campaign finance system, now that it is clear that his actions have not always been a match for his ideals.
Last week, the Globe reported that McCain had written letters to the Federal Communications Commission urging that it take action on a decision being sought by a major contributor to his campaign, who also allowed McCain to use a corporate jet on several occasions. That opened McCain up to questions about whether he was living up to his own rhetoric about the need to overhaul the campaign system. Since then, several other like examples have surfaced to underscore the pattern.
McCain insisted he did nothing more than he would have done for anyone who had complained of FCC foot-dragging, but he canceled a Saturday fund-raiser that was to be hosted by the same contributor to avoid questions about an appearance of impropriety.
Bush, meanwhile, has taken a position on campaign finance that could hurt him in the general election. The Texas governor has raised an unprecedented $70 million for his primary campaign and has rejected federal matching funds, which allows him to avoid spending caps that apply to all of the other candidates except Steve Forbes, who is self-financing most of his race.
In the process, Bush has defended one of the most controversial activities in politics, the collection of unregulated ''soft money'' to the political parties. That is the practice that allows an individual to give contributions of $100,000 or more to a party, while the same person can give no more than $1,000 to a candidate per election cycle.
Some of issue talk is so detailed that it can be mind-numbing for debate watchers.
''The whole discussion about `capped vouchers' vs. `weighted average vouchers' - the average person could care less about it,'' Spiliotes said. ''They just want to know whether they will have health care.''
But such details seem crucial to the candidates, who spend hours mastering details before debates.
For the Republicans, particularly for the party's front-runners, taxes have emerged as the race's signature issue.
Bush describes his tax cut of $483 billion over 10 years as a reasonable middle ground. ''I've been criticized for being too bold, and I've been criticized for not being bold enough,'' Bush says in one ad that began running this week. ''It kind of says to me I'm doing all right.''
McCain has proposed a tax cut about half as large as the Texas governor's, about $500 billion over 10 years, but the Arizonan is likely to increase the size of his tax cut when he unveils the full proposal tomorrow.
But even with a higher dollar figure, the message of McCain's tax plan will be that it is more prudent and equitable than Bush's.
Bush's plan would give more than 60 percent of its benefits to the top 10 percent of taxpayers, according to the liberal Center for Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington. Specifically, Bush proposes to cut federal income tax rates. His plan drops the two top rates of 39.6 percent and 36 percent to 33 percent. The middle rates of 28 percent and 31 percent would be reduced to 25 percent. Bush would leave unchanged the bottom rate of 15 percent.
Meanwhile, for Gore and Bradley the question is not how best to return the surplus, it is a matter of how best to use it for social programs like health care and education.
But even on the Democratic side, the same arguments about fiscal prudence and risk apply.
Bradley has built his campaign around his health care plan, which he says could cost $650 billion over 10 years. Gore says the figure is much higher, however, perhaps more than $1 trillion.
And just as McCain warns that Bush's tax cut will leave no money for other priorities, Gore charges that Bradley ''blows the surplus'' and ''doesn't leave room for investing in the future.''
Bradley has countered by saying that ''in a period of unprecedented surplus,'' the vice president should offer more ambitious health care solutions. And he also has alleged that Gore's programs would exhaust the surplus.
And so they beat on, matching detail against detail, in a ceaseless argument that will end only on election day.
