One step to the right and two steps to the left. Two steps to the left and one step to the right.

It's not easy doing the McCain Shuffle. It's a very delicate dance. One misstep could decide who the next president will be.

Everyone is urging Sen. John McCain to lean much farther to the right and to rest his submissive head on the shoulder of his party's conservative base.

But just how far to the right can McCain afford to lean? If he keeps dancing to the beat of conservative extremists, is he electable in November? In these Bush-battered times when so many Americans are energized by a liberal such as Sen. Barack Obama, isn't the quintessential conservative a sure loser?

McCain always has been a maverick, willing to buck the conservative wing of the GOP. And that is precisely what makes him attractive to the moderate Republicans and independents, who are really his unique base. That is also precisely what makes him the most electable Republican in November. But if he keeps pandering to the extremists, he may lose the moderates without really conquering the conservatives.

After all, no matter what he does now, the conservatives and evangelicals never will forgive him for proposing comprehensive immigration reform that placed illegal immigrants on a path to legalization. To them, proponents of any sort of "amnesty" always will be "the enemy."

And then they call themselves Christians! Go figure!

On immigration, McCain already has been two-stepping to the right. In order to please the zealots, he vowed not to seek a legalization plan until after he secures the borders. But any more steps in that direction may cost him a huge chunk of the Latino vote, which he desperately needs to be competitive in the general election.

If he decides to sign a "no-amnesty" pledge or to pick an immigrant basher for a running mate, he can say adios to the support he needs from Latinos.

In presidential elections, Republicans never expect to get a majority of the Latino vote. If they get 40 percent, they're happy. Their goal is to prevent Latinos from voting as an overwhelming bloc that would give Democrats a victory. If they divide the Latino vote, they neutralize it and they win.

Of all the Republicans who ran for president this year, only McCain was a realist on immigration. He knows that you don't solve the problem by ignoring the 12 million illegal immigrants who are already here or by naively expecting them to return to their homelands voluntarily. He knows that trying to deport them would be insane, so he tried to fix the broken immigration system by bringing them out of the shadows, making them pay fines and requiring them to wait in line for at least a decade.

For this reason, of all the GOP candidates, only McCain had the potential of getting a good chunk of the Latino vote. He still does but not if he keeps dancing to the right.

When he spoke to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington last week, McCain was booed when he mentioned immigration. They treated him as if he once had supported the bubonic plague. Nevertheless, he pledged to "secure our borders first, and only after we achieved widespread consensus that our borders are secure would we address other aspects of the problem in a way that defends the rule of law and does not encourage another wave of illegal immigration."

So, just how long is that going to take? Next summer, when McCain is up against either Sen. Hillary Clinton or Sen. Barack Obama, he will have to define his position in contrast with an opponent who openly favors the comprehensive reforms he originally proposed.

That's when the McCain Shuffle really will get funky.

To find out more about Miguel Perez and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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