Michigan's Uncertain Republicans Offered Choice Between Heart and Brain

The two front runners in the Republican presidential nomination race in Michigan, John McCain and Mitt Romney, spent the final hours before tomorrow's election appealing for support through contrasting organs - one to the brain, the other the heart.

McCain took to the road in snowbound western Michigan with his "straight talking" message on a raft of micro policies, seeking to win potential voters by flattering their intellects. Romney scuttled across the heavily populated Detroit area tugging at his audiences' heart-strings through the rubric of family, nation and God.

If ever there was an indication that the Republican party is in conflict about its identity and unsure of the road ahead, it was these two diametrically-opposed approaches and the fact that the pair stand neck and neck. A raft of opinion polls respectively put McCain slightly ahead, Romney slightly ahead, or on a dead heat - suggesting that the only reliable prediction is that this election is too close to call.

McCain began his day in Kalamazoo, a small town in the west of the state once famous for growing celery which has diversified into technology research. The meeting was subdued, serious and almost professorial in its focus on detailed policy.

The senator for Arizona spoke of the need to reduce health care costs by setting up medical walk-in centers, climate change and how to combat it through investment in clean-fuel technologies, and how he would wean America from dependence on foreign oil.

His mantra is: "Let me tell you something you are not going to want to hear." Among the unpalatable truths that he itemized was his once unpopular support for the Bush administration's surge in Iraq which he said had now come good.

McCain - who, were he to win, would become the oldest president in US history at 72 - was self-deprecating, joking about his physical similarities to Arnold Schwarzenegger and even poking fun at his record as a Vietnam war hero. "I was able to intercept a surface to air missile with my own plane," he said.

If McCain spoke to the Republican party's head, Romney focused directly on its beating heart, rousing excited crowds in Southfields and Taylor with his definition of the American people. "We are family oriented. We believe in God, by and large, or something bigger than ourselves. We believe in opportunity. And we are patriotic to our core."

At one of the rallies his son, Tagg Romney, introduced him as a "man of action". But with his chiseled jaw, relaxed charisma and towering stature - another striking contrast to the diminutive McCain - he might as well have said Action Man.

There were moments of cohesion: both candidates invoked the spirit of Ronald Reagan, both promised to revive Michigan's sick economy and both said they would quickly shut off the American border with Mexico to stem the flow of illegal immigrants (McCain was notably quiet about his backing for a process to legalize millions of undocumented workers).

Those points of fusion belied the fact that they were speaking to different audiences: McCain to the large pool of Michiganders who remain undecided about who to back and who gave him his victory over George Bush here in 2000; and Romney to the hard core of the Republican party who crave reaffirmation of their traditional patriotic values.

Tomorrow's result is expected to determine whether Romney - already wounded by defeats in Iowa and New Hampshire - stays in the race.