In short, McCain is getting a free pass, and it’s beginning to show. In campaign events across western Michigan, voters are once again being reminded of the qualities of character that have made him an admired figure on the national political scene, without the distraction of ads designed to muddy that image.

Asked why she likes McCain, Tina Wolfis of Kalamazoo pointed to “his honesty, his straight-forwardness.”

Other voters, Republicans all, cited similar qualities. Pressed about issues, some mentioned federal spending or the war.

“He puts country ahead of politics,” added David Hassenger, a Republican official in St. Joseph County, just south of Kalamazoo. “[Republicans] deserved to have their asses kicked in the last election. ... We’ve forgotten what we were supposed to be doing there.”

Even those who mentioned immigration — or “the illegal aliens,” as Wolfis put it — seemed unaware that McCain was an outspoken Republican advocate for providing illegal immigrants with a pathway to citizenship last spring.

Sharon Hoogendoorn, who works at Hope College in Holland, Mich., where McCain also had a town hall meeting Monday, said she was a border hawk and felt strongly about the issue. Asked how that squared with McCain’s stance on immigration, Hoogendoorn, who is leaning toward the Arizona senator, said, “I think that’s how he feels — we didn’t bridge that issue today. But I’m pretty sure that’s how he feels, as well.”

As McCain campaigns through western Michigan ahead of tomorrow’s primary, it’s abundantly clear that he’s running a race in stark contrast to the 2000 election, when the conservative establishment united against the maverick senator and went after him in full force after his New Hampshire victory.

McCain’s support appears less tied to any one particular issue than to his well-cultivated, straight-talking persona — one that is unsullied this year as opponents such as Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson express their own admiration or friendship for McCain rather than a desire to defeat him. And the lack of negative messaging has led to widespread unfamiliarity with McCain’s position on illegal immigration. Mitt Romney, for his part, is broadcasting only spots about his own record here after seeing what a barrage of negative ads got him in the first two states.

The Republican candidates aren’t the only ones treating McCain with kid gloves. Norquist, who helped spearhead third-party anti-McCain efforts in 2000, has overseen just a single round of little-noticed phone calls into New Hampshire urging voters to call both McCain and Thompson and urge them to sign the no-tax-increase pledge. He said his group has no plans to do any further calls.Norquist’s approach this year is indicative that McCain is in a stronger position this time around. By Norquist’s reckoning, he has come around on some key issues, while others don’t have the resonance they once did.

“In 2000, we criticized McCain’s call for campaign finance reform,” Norquist noted in an e-mail message. “The whole movement was concerned with that issue — the NRA, Right to Life, Right to Work, American Conservative Union, most business groups. 

“Today, McCain is calling for continuing the Bush tax cuts — that is leading with a $2 trillion tax cut,” Norquist added.

So instead of trying to defeat McCain, Norquist has simply declared victory and welcomed him as a convert to the cause.

“Successful movements accept prodigal sons when they return,” he said.

Divided loyalties among the Republican base have also forced a rethinking about the GOP field, with McCain suddenly emerging as the least bad option in an imperfect group.

“Everything in politics comes down to a choice,” said unaligned Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio. “In 2000, George W. Bush was a perfectly acceptable choice to all factions of the GOP. In 2008, every leading GOP contender has some serious baggage, and not one of them has successfully become the ‘consensus conservative.’”

“In a McCain/Huckabee face off, McCain is probably more broadly acceptable to the party’s rank and file,” Fabrizio said. “In a McCain/Romney faceoff, McCain is probably less acceptable than Romney but easily beats him on candor and firm convictions.”

Further, his opponents’ strategic imperatives have freed McCain to concentrate on the kinds of voters most receptive to his message: moderate Republicans, independents and Democrats.

While Huckabee is actively campaigning in this state and threatening to take some of Romney’s vote share among core Republicans, Rudy Giuliani is not contesting the primary — and thus not competing for the same group of moderate voters as McCain. In South Carolina, Thompson is directly taking on Huckabee — McCain’s most serious rival there — and hoping to cut into some of the former Baptist preacher’s evangelical vote. Similarly, Giuliani is nowhere to be found there, ceding the many military retirees and security-minded snowbirds to McCain.

Part of McCain’s advantage in New Hampshire, but also in Michigan and South Carolina, is that these early primaries are all open to unaffiliated and Democratic voters — many of whom are attracted to McCain’s compelling life story and image as a straight-shooting truth-teller.

Even before tomorrow’s primary vote, this facet of McCain’s support is prompting some prebuttal spin.

“If there were just Republicans and independents, I would win Michigan,” Romney said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “Democrats also get to vote, so you can’t be 100 percent sure.”

Rep. Peter Hoekstra, a veteran western Michigan congressman who is backing Romney, was even more blunt.

“It will be a tainted victory,” Hoekstra said in a telephone interview about what a McCain victory would mean if it were built on support from Democrats. “It will be a nuance that a lot of the media will just miss.”

While offering confidence in Romney’s chances, Hoekstra expressed frustration that, as in 2000, “Democratic involvement will play a decisive role in who wins the primary.”

“The state legislature and state party did a terrible job planning the primary,” Hoekstra said. “We could’ve just had a state convention and allowed Democrats to elect a third of the delegates.”

Republican Rep. Fred Upton, another long-serving Michigan congressman and a McCain backer, scoffed at Hoekstra’s claim and said there was nothing impure about winning on the backs of Democrats and independents.

“You can’t win in November with just Republicans,” Upton said in a hotel lobby interview before McCain’s event here. “You only win in November when you keep your base and reach out to independents.”