In GOP, It’s Bush vs. Dole, With 4 Others Trying to Catch Up

With the 1988 Republican presidential campaign shifting from the strategic planning stage to actual combat on the hustings, the contest is taking shape as the political equivalent of a two-ring circus. And that, in turn, is dictating the game plans of all six major GOP candidates.

Facing each other in the main ring are the two most formidable contenders--Vice President George Bush and Kansas Sen. Bob Dole, both of whom are expected to declare their candidacies sometime in October. Each man’s strategists know their candidate must defeat the other or be eliminated himself.

In the other ring, which at least for now is little more than a sideshow, the game plans for the other four candidates have one thing in common: Each is struggling to edge out the other three in the early going, then go on later to defeat the winner of the Bush-Dole clash.

New York Rep. Jack Kemp, television evangelist Pat Robertson, former Delaware Gov. Pierre S. (Pete) du Pont IV and former Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. would each be glad, for example, to finish no worse than third, or thereabouts, in the traditional opening test, next February’s Iowa caucuses.

This Republican order of battle contrasts sharply with the situation in the Democratic Party, where there is no clear leader among the presidential contenders.

What dictates the two-ring approach of GOP strategists is the long shadow cast by the clear front runner, Vice President Bush. He is indisputably the best known, the best financed, the best organized candidate in the Republican field. And he has managed to survive the Iran- contra scandal with his lead intact.

“Bush is increasingly formidable,” Republican consultant Eddie Mahe Jr. said. “He has shown a capacity to avoid mistakes.”

If Bush is “the front runner,” says Charles Black, campaign manger for Kemp, then Dole is “ a front runner,” operating on a level just below Bush and above the rest.

Running for 12 Years

Bush and Dole have certain similarities in background, said Richard Williamson, who was senior strategist for former Nevada Sen. Paul Laxalt, who pulled out of the race last week. “They’ve both been running for President for about 12 years.”

In addition, Williamson pointed out, they are both rooted in the GOP’s traditional ruling Establishment: Bush hails from its Eastern upper crust, Dole from its Midwestern bedrock. As Establishmentarians, their candidacies are driven by the pragmatic practice of politics rather than its ideological music.

Bush’s game plan will place far more stress on political muscle--money and organization--than on the themes and goals that make up a campaign message and endow a candidate with a special identity in the minds of voters. The vice president’s strategists are prepared to beat back all challengers, but they recognize that Dole is their most immediate threat.

Dole’s elevation over the other rivals gives his candidacy added credibility and helps him rally support and raise funds to compete against Bush. But the disadvantage of Dole’s enhanced status is that it raises expectations for his performance in the primaries and caucuses and forces his strategists into aiming for an early defeat of Bush.

Like Bush’s strategists, although operating on a somewhat smaller scale, Dole’s managers seem to be putting more emphasis on money and organization than on philosophy in their plans for overtaking the vice president and fending off the four contenders in the lower tier.

It is in the second rank where most of the emphasis on ideology is to be found. Bush and Dole simply want Ronald Reagan’s job. By contrast, Kemp, Robertson and Du Pont want to be recognized as Reagan’s ideological heir--for reasons that are practical as well as philosophical.

With the exception of Haig--whose background in business and the White House makes him as much of an Establishmentarian as Bush or Dole--this group of long shots sees the development of a compelling ideological message as the critical first step on the road to the nomination. Only by projecting such a credo can they rally crucial conservative support.

Laxalt’s withdrawal--he blamed lack of funds--emphasized the difficulties facing the remaining second-tier candidates. Laxalt’s biggest asset was his close personal ties to Reagan. With his withdrawal, other candidates, notably Bush and Kemp, began courting prominent Reaganites who had been supporting the former senator.

Other analysts said that, by pulling out, Laxalt had enlarged the pool of rank-and-file conservative voters who could be wooed by his former rivals, most notably by Kemp and Du Pont. But, overall, Laxalt’s absence does not seem likely to have much effect on the fundamental game plans of the remaining contenders because he had failed to establish himself in the competition.

“Almost by definition, he couldn’t have had much support or he wouldn’t have dropped out,” said Robert Perkins, Du Pont’s deputy campaign manager.

Complicating Republican strategic planning is the fact that the competition begins earlier than ever this year--in mid-January, when the Michigan GOP holds county conventions to pick its convention delegates, weeks before the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 8, the normal campaign kick-off.

Actually, the almost inscrutable Michigan process began last year and has continued through a series of organizational skirmishes in which Robertson and Kemp have combined forces against Bush. Their alliance could defeat Bush in January, causing him serious embarrassment just before the critical contest in Iowa.

Arcane Rules a Factor

But Bush’s strategists contend that he will prevail in Michigan. And, in the end, the outcome could be determined by an argument over rules so arcane that it will diminish the significance of whatever happens.

Here’s a glimpse at the game plans for each candidate in approximate descending order of strength, based on statements by each candidate’s handlers, a rough consensus of the views of the opposing strategists and independent analysts.

BUSH: Lee Atwater, Bush’s campaign manager, says there are four components to his strategy for winning the nomination: organization, fund raising, allocation of resources and the candidate’s message. But of these, the message so far seems less equal than the others.

Starting this fall, Atwater promises, Bush will “articulate his position on every major issue,” painting a picture of himself as “forward-looking but conservative.” Bush’s rivals doubt whether, given the inherent inhibitions imposed by his job, the vice president will be able to establish a distinctive credo. His rivals contend also that Bush has tried to create an aura of inevitability around his campaign and argue that he therefore cannot afford to lose any contest anywhere.

But the real purpose of Bush’s emphasis on organization and fund raising--he has already taken in nearly $11 million, more than twice as much as Dole--is not to guarantee victories but to enable him to recover from defeats.

Even if Bush should lose Iowa to Dole, Atwater believes his candidate can rebound in New Hampshire on Feb. 16 and gain the upper hand in the Super Tuesday primary three weeks later on March 8, when 20 states vote.

The model for this strategy is the 1984 Walter F. Mondale campaign, which bounced back after a stunning upset loss in New Hampshire to Gary Hart. “Mondale got to be the nominee for one reason,” Atwater reasons. “He had the organization out there on Super Tuesday.”

DOLE: Dole’s game plan looks beyond the nomination and rests on the argument that Dole has a better chance of winning the general election.

“He (Bush) is not electable,” Robert Ellsworth, chairman of Dole’s campaign, says. “I hear that all over this country.” By stressing electability, Dole avoids the risks involved in fashioning a message that might appeal to some factions in the party but alienate others. Instead, he can talk in more general terms about his competence and experience.

But Dole does have the burden of proving his case against Bush by defeating him at the polls and doing this fairly soon. Iowa, where Dole has been investing most of his candidate time, and where his farm state background helps him, is his first and perhaps best shot.

Ideally, Dole would follow up success in Iowa with a victory in New Hampshire the next week. That would allow him to finish off Bush on Super Tuesday and then mop up whoever emerged from the second tier of candidates. To help lay the organizational groundwork for such a costly nationwide contest, Dole spent the August congressional recess stumping in 59 cities in 28 states.

As for finances, Dole expects to raise as much as Bush, even though Bush’s money is coming in faster. “Part of our fund-raising plan is efficiency in spending,” Ellsworth says. “You save your money until the end of the campaign, and then you pour it on.”

KEMP: “Our campaign is based on two models that didn’t win. George Bush in 1980 and Gary Hart in 1984,” campaign manager Black says. “Both of them started with low recognition, targeted early states and, by exceeding expectations, got national attention.” Kemp’s goal is to finish third in Iowa and among the top two in New Hampshire, which would establish him as a serious factor in the race.

But Kemp strategists say that their man will not fade after his early success, as Bush did in his unsuccessful 1980 race against Reagan for the GOP presidential nomination. Black contends that, unlike Bush, Kemp will have a strong, clear message designed to rally conservatives behind him. This will be based on his close links to Reagan’s economic policies, particularly tax cuts, his advocacy of the Strategic Defense Initiative and his tough stance against the threat of communist aggression.

Kemp will also be better prepared for political opportunity than Hart, whose campaign faded because of weak organization beyond New Hampshire, Black promises. “We will be organized. We will not spend a lot of money, but we will have talent and leadership in every state in the country.”

Then will come Super Tuesday. His rivals will outspend him, but, by focusing his efforts, Kemp can win some primaries and emerge as one of the two candidates who probably will be left in the race, his strategists believe.

By then, Kemp’s advisers reckon, his list of direct mail contributors will have grown from 50,000 to 100,000 names, which would be a big asset in financing the rest of the campaign.

ROBERTSON: “People are confused and upset with their political leadership,” Robertson’s chief strategist, Marc Nuttle, contends. “They don’t know who to trust any more.”

This belief that the electorate is in ferment and looking outside the traditional political channels for leadership is central to Robertson’s candidacy. His big advantage, as his advisers see it, is that he can take advantage of such flux because he has a solid, well disciplined base of supporters.

Robertson’s plan is to use his core support to help organize and expand his base among the Evangelical Christians who, some polls show, make up about one-third of the population. Although Robertson is identified with such divisive issues as abortion, Nuttle contends that his message is broader than that: “Pat Robertson is not running for pastor, he is running for chief executive.”

Robertson Game Plan

The game plan is for Robertson to beat Bush in Michigan, which would help Dole defeat Bush in Iowa. Regardless of what happens in New Hampshire, his strategists believe, those results--a Robertson win in Michigan, a Dole victory in Iowa--would make Robertson a front runner going into the Super Tuesday primary in the South, where Robertson claims his greatest strength. After that, Nuttle says, the contest will come down to “Pat Robertson and maybe Bush, hanging on by his fingernails.”

What this scenario overlooks, rivals say, is Robertson’s high negatives among voters who disapprove of a minister’s seeking the presidency, especially an evangelical with such strong views on so-called social issues.

DU PONT: With no clear ideological or geographic base outside his own tiny state of Delaware, Du Pont has set about the difficult task of forging a constituency by achieving success in Iowa and New Hampshire.

“If our campaign does not do well in Iowa and better in New Hampshire, all we will have left is one farewell news conference,” adviser Perkins says.

Since he announced his candidacy in September last year, Du Pont has been spending nearly all of his time in those two states, counting on gaining enough momentum from personal appearances there to offset the in-depth organizing that Bush and others have done in those early states.

Du Pont’s message is keyed to the idea that the country wants change and that his is the only candidacy actually offering it. Among other things, Du Pont wants to abolish welfare entirely, replacing it with government-guaranteed jobs, to phase out farm price supports, require drug testing for teen-agers and allow some workers to choose a voluntary investment plan as an option for Social Security.

Du Pont hopes to lump Bush, Dole and Kemp together as Establishment figures in voters’ minds. But some Republicans say that, even if Du Pont does relatively well in the early contests, his campaign will falter because of the lack of organizational work in the later states.

HAIG: Among the other second-tier candidates who are generally more conservative and more iconoclastic than he, Haig seems somewhat out of place. His stress on the high posts he has held in the past is remindful of Bush, and his contention that he is the most electable candidate is similar to Dole’s argument.

“The concern my father has is that the Republican Party in the next election could lose the White House because of Ronald Reagan stepping down,” says Alexander P. Haig, the candidate’s lawyer-son and acting campaign manager.

Foreign Affairs Experience

Haig bases the case for his electability on his experience as White House chief of staff and his grasp of foreign affairs, which, he contends, is all the more critical because of the impact of world trade on the U.S. economy.

The younger Haig says that his father will make the budget defict the centerpiece of his campaign, and he has set himself apart from other GOP candidates on that issue by contending that the blame for the red ink rests with his own party.

Haig’s blueprint for gaining the nomination calls for targeting parts of Iowa and making a full-scale effort in New Hampshire, where his son figures he has to finish no worse than third.

His past prominence helps Haig get a forum for his views most places he goes. But he needs to find a way to attract the support of practicing politicians if his candidacy is to achieve credibility.