GOP Offers McCain Helping Hand

Republican Party chairmen, by custom and practice, don't pick favorites in presidential primaries.

So it was a significant development last week when RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman, an as down-to-his-boots Bushie as you're likely to ever find, privately told John McCain that he would be willing to lend a hand raising money for the Arizona senator's political action committee, multiple Republican sources told TIME.

Six years after the Bush team, which included Mehlman, all but trashed McCain in the ugly 2000 Republican primaries, Mehlman's move was another signal that the party's allergy to McCain is lifting as the senator continues to garner positive looks from the GOP's key base of financial fundraisers. Roughly a dozen top fundraisers attending a closed RNC meeting this week in Naples, Florida, privately promised McCain, who delivered a speech to the group, that they would be with him if and when he ran.

Mehlman, as party chair, can't go that far. But before the Naples session ended, he told McCain he'd help him raise money for his leadership PAC, which gives money to Republican congressional candidates. It was another sign that party leaders realize that a man they not so long ago reviled can, and just might, win the nomination.

One party official told TIME that "the chairman is working with McCain just like he's working with other '08 aspirants and it's in his job description to do so." But there is no question that Mehlman's offer was another sign of warming between the party establishment and its frontrunner. "Obviously," said a McCain ally, "we're gonna take him up on the offer."