TLANTA - From the beginning, Senator John McCain's courtship of Dixie has been star-crossed, and the primary road through the South next week offers little encouragement for someone struggling to stay within striking distance of Texas Governor George W. Bush.
As the battle shifts to Bush's ground, McCain, the rebel candidate, is at a further disadvantage because he has managed to make many enemies across old rebel territory with his outspoken style. According to political leaders and analysts, Bush appears poised to sweep the six states involved in the next major round of primaries on Tuesday.
The big contests will take place in Bush's home state and in Florida, where his brother, Jeb Bush, is governor. The outlook for McCain, after being drubbed by Bush in Georgia, is just as daunting in Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Oklahoma. A total of 340 Republican delegates are at stake.
Bush, attempting to nail down the last of the 1,034 delegates needed to win the Republican nomination, has plans to travel across the region over the next few days.
In recognition of the futility of his efforts in the South, McCain is concentrating on the Mountain States, where 91 delegates will be chosen in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming on Friday. As McCain's press secretary, Howard Opinsky, remarked sarcastically the other day, ''We're going to leave the Southern strategy to Bush.''
Bill Bradley was never competitive in the South in the Democratic race against a native son, Vice President Al Gore. He said he chose to concentrate on states where he felt he had a chance, and he never established any beachhead in the region.
But for a military hero with a strong conservative voting record, McCain's failure to make inroads in the South has crippled his chances here.
During his campaign in South Carolina last month, McCain was asked why he had not invoked his family's Southern background, which dates back to Confederate days, to win affinity with Southern voters. He said he refused to play the Southern card because he did not want to inflame the controversy over the presence of the Confederate battle flag atop the State Capitol.
Instead, he was critical of Bush's appearance at Bob Jones University, a fundamentalist college. A few days later, a wave of Christian conservatives swamped McCain in the primary.
When McCain increased hostilities with the religious right with a sweeping attack on fundamentalist leaders Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell before last week's Virginia primary, he triggered another backlash by the core constituency of the Republican Party in the South. He lost decisively.
But the antipathy he created among Republicans in Mississippi, which elects 33 delegates Tuesday, is an especially instructive case study of McCain's problem in the region.
In his best-selling autobiography, ''Faith of My Fathers,'' McCain wrote about his Confederate ancestors in Mississippi, saying ''my family's history was my pride.'' His great-great-grandfather died while serving in the Mississippi cavalry; his great-grandfather, ''barely 14 years old at the end of the Civil War, offered to enlist as well, giving his age as 18. He was rejected, but later in his life would express his patriotism by serving as sheriff of Carroll County, Mississippi.''
As the child of a naval officer, McCain said he ''spent many happy summer days'' at the family plantation there. His grandfather, who became an admiral, attended Ole Miss for two years before enrolling in the Naval Academy. Two military bases in Mississippi were named for members of McCain's family. The situation seemed ripe for McCain to make a connection.
The Arizonan was once playfully introduced as ''Mississippi's third senator'' by his colleague, Trent Lott. But McCain ran afoul of the Senate majority leader over tobacco and campaign finance legislation before his presidential campaign began and later antagonized Republican executives in Mississippi by appearing at a fund-raiser with prominent Democrats in Jackson 18 months ago.
The event was hosted by Richard Scruggs, a high-powered trial lawyer who worked closely with McCain on anti-tobacco matters. Though Scruggs is Lott's brother-in-law, he is a nominal Democrat and a close associate of the state's Democratic attorney general, Mike Moore, who praised McCain at the fund-raiser.
McCain was rebuked by state Republican Chairman Mike Retzer in a strong letter that accused him of offering ''considerable aid and comfort to our enemies'' while being ''devious and disloyal'' to Republican Party officials who knew nothing of his appearance in the state until they read about it in a Jackson newspaper.
McCain fired back with his own angry letter to Retzer. ''I take offense at the tone and language of your letter,'' he wrote. ''I use words like devious and disloyal very sparingly, sir, for I recognize that they are used to call another's character into question.'' Retzer is now running Bush's campaign in several Southern states, including Mississippi, Tennessee and Louisiana, and he says that internal Bush polling shows McCain is doomed throughout the region.
The entire hierarchy of the state GOP is behind Bush, who plans to campaign in Mississippi as well as Tennessee next Monday. ''Bush will win Mississippi comfortably,'' said Senator Thad Cochran, the senior Republican officeholder in the state and an early Bush backer.
Bush aides say McCain may find some support in a couple of congressional districts in Tennessee, where Senator Fred Thompson is leading his campaign, but that represents no real threat to Bush.
McCain's only other opening in the South appears to be a tier of congressional districts in northern Florida, running from Pensacola to Jacksonville, where there are several naval air installations and many retired military personnel.
''Florida is McCain's best shot,'' said Susan MacManus, a political science professor at the University of South Florida. ''He's got the veterans' support and he's doing well among the older voters. The good news for him is that a high percentage of older people vote. The bad news is that they tend to be party loyalists.'' And in the Florida primary, which is closed to all but registered Republicans, the party line favors Bush.
