Some of you may remember Democratic presidential candidate Paul Tsongas holding up a stuffed panda bear in Fort Lauderdale during the 1992 primary. He was making the point that Bill Clinton was more than willing to pander to voters while he, Tsongas, was not going to play Santa Claus with tax cuts.

Now, John McCain is being told that if he fails to pander to GOP conservatives, he can't possibly win the general election.

Just say no, senator.

It started when attention-seeking pundits, talk-radio bloviators and single-issue advocates, who lust to be large and in charge in the party of Lincoln, spent the better part of three months trying to convince voters that McCain was some sort of crypto-liberal. Mitt Romney, you see, was their guy.

Then the voters had their say.

Had Romney not changed residences so frequently he might have been shut out of the primaries entirely. By giving the former Massachusetts governor only three states on Feb. 5, conservative voters proved they had not been bamboozled by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, et al.

Even with Focus on the Family's James Dobson's pronouncement on Ingraham's radio show, "Should John McCain capture the nomination, as many assume, I believe this general election will offer the worst choices for president in my lifetime," it was McCain who eclipsed Romney among evangelical Christians on Super Tuesday.

These surly "so-called" spokespersons, who isolate themselves in a closed loop (talk-show host interviewing talk-show host or blogger quoting blogger) must realize, albeit reluctantly, that their credibility will only undergo further erosion if they dig in their heels and refuse to back a pro-life, pro-surge, fiscal conservative.

Perhaps Chris Matthews is right — unless Hillary is elected, conservative commentators will end up with nothing to rail about.

Still, on Feb. 10, even President Bush couldn't resist violating what Ronald Reagan labeled "the 11th Commandment." During a Fox News Sunday interview, he pontificated, "I think that if John is the nominee, he has got some convincing to do to convince people that he is a solid conservative, and I'll be glad to help him if he is the nominee."

If anything, McCain would do well to distance himself from a president whose 30 percent approval rating (Associated Press-Ipsos) hovers at a nearly Nixonian low.

Furthermore, although lately Mike "I majored in miracles not math" Huckabee seems to be running the table, momentum-wise, nobody doubts McCain will triumph in St. Paul. The latest count has McCain with nearly 70 percent of needed delegates. More importantly, the most recent Newsweek poll reports that 69 percent of self-described conservatives say they will be satisfied with McCain as the nominee.

Conventional wisdom regarding GOP presidential campaigns is to veer right during the primary and lean left during the general. It's time, however, to shift that worn-out paradigm.

In an effort to build a long-term Republican majority, Karl Rove pitted red America against blue to produce 50-percent-plus-one victories. The strategy was crucial in boosting Republican congressional numbers in 2002 and returning George W. Bush to the Oval Office. But voters have grown weary of polarization and give every indication of demanding something different in 2008.

Thirty-four percent of registered voters identify themselves as independents and 15 percent call themselves "conservative Democrats." It's these voters who will permit McCain to remain competitive in projected head-to-head bouts with either Clinton or Obama.

Politicos need to change-up their tactics: appeal to the sweet spot in the middle — and to do so from the get-go. Poll after poll reports that America is looking for a leader who is more about problem-solving and less about ideological purity.

Former U.S. Sen. Tsongas, who reached across the aisle almost as often as McCain, told Judy Woodruff in 1991 that he refused "to be locked into the ideology, sort of the class warfare, corporate bashing that Democrats find attractive."

When Tsongas passed away Jan. 20, 1997, the Boston Globe's Mike Barnicle observed: "But I think his cancer changed him a great deal. I think the fact that he combated it successfully gave him the opportunity to realize and to articulate publicly during the course of his presidential campaign that there was a tremendous market in this country for truth."

Then he added, "And when he ran for the presidency, having faced death, he was certainly unafraid to tell the truth as he saw it. And I think to us that might make him seem unusual, but I think to the average person it would make him seem someone with just huge amounts of common sense."

There is a bull market in America, these days, for both truth and common sense. If some conservatives miss it, well, they miss it.

— Beverly Kelley, Ph.D., who writes every other Monday for The Star, is an author ("Reelpolitik" and "Reelpolitik II") and professor in the Communication Department at California Lutheran University. Visit http://beverlykelley.typepad.com/my_weblog/. Her e-mail address is Kelley@clunet.edu.