President Issues Sharp Challenge to Bork Foes : If Senate Rejects Nominee, Reagan Vows to Find Candidate Critics Will ‘Object to Just as Much’

President Reagan, only hours after White House officials toned down a scathing speech he had planned against opponents of Supreme Court nominee Robert H. Bork, vowed defiantly Tuesday that he will try to find another candidate “that they’ll object to just as much.”

Reagan, who also branded the anti-Bork campaign “a political joke,” made his sharp remarks after the White House hastily rewrote his speech to the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce here to delete language accusing Bork’s opponents of conducting a “sophisticated campaign of smears and lies.”

The changes, said White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater, were made in response to last week’s plea by Bork that “voices be lowered” as the debate over his nomination, apparently doomed to defeat, moves to the full Senate.

Cite as Evidence

Reagan’s later blast, made in response to a shouted comment from an audience member, was immediately seized by Bork opponents as evidence that he is more guilty than they of the strident partisan attacks Bork has decried.

Furthermore, declared Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), a leading Bork foe: “If he wants to send up somebody totally out of the mainstream, a conservative extremist, then he will be rejected.”

The clash came as Senate Democrats and Republicans negotiated to bring the Bork nomination up for a vote quickly. Senate Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) offered to begin debate immediately and vote today, but conservative Republicans said that they wanted more time to prepare their speeches. Discussions about the timing will continue today.

Bork’s remaining chances for confirmation deteriorated further Tuesday as Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) became the 54th senator to announce that he would vote against the nominee.

Some fervent Bork supporters have said that full Senate consideration of the nomination would provide a forum to lash out at Bork opponents who helped make him one of the most controversial Supreme Court nominees in American history and who helped bring about his rejection by the Senate Judiciary Committee last week.

However, the White House stressed that it is intent on following Bork’s wishes for a more moderate approach. Asked about Reagan’s sharp warning about his next nominee, Fitzwater said: “He just meant that if he has to name another nominee, it would be a conservative.”

Reagan’s anger has remained apparent, however. In the speech text distributed before he left for New Jersey, Reagan lambasted “liberal special interests (that) have declared a war of conquest on the American system of justice.”

He dramatically compared his support of Bork to the role played by actor James Stewart in the 1930s movie, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” In the movie, as quoted by Reagan, Stewart declared on the Senate floor that “lost causes are the only causes worth fighting for,” and that he would “stay right here and fight for this lost cause.”

“So will I,” Reagan declared, according to the prepared text.

However, in the toned-down version, Reagan omitted the movie reference and complained of the “distortions and innuendoes” he said were directed at Bork.

Wanted Calm Exchange

He said that when he nominated Bork, he thought the confirmation process would be conducted “in a statesmanlike manner with a calm and sensible exchange of views.”

“That hasn’t been the case,” the President said.

White House officials said Reagan already had received the milder version of the speech before he left Washington, and that distribution of the earlier one was a staff mistake.

Fitzwater said the speech was toned down because “the President wants to have a principled, disciplined, dignified debate” over the Bork nomination.

Thomas C. Griscom, the White House director of communications, denied a suggestion that the speech switch was a ploy to allow the President to voice his complaint without actually using the harsh rhetoric that had upset Bork.

In any event, Reagan’s softer tone was short-lived.

After a member of the audience shouted: “We want Bork,” Reagan ad-libbed: “You want Bork, too? So do I . . .

“What’s at issue is that we make sure the process of appointing and confirming judges never again is turned into such a political joke. If I have to appoint another one, I’ll try to find one that they’ll object to just as much as they did to this one.”

In his address, Reagan said he had no “illusions” that Bork could still win in the Senate.

However, Vice President George Bush Tuesday remained one of the few holdouts in the Administration still talking about turning the vote around.

With 54 senators now committed to voting against confirmation, Bush said in a television interview that he hoped there will be enough senators “who change their minds to confirm this good, decent, very bright and brilliant man . . .”

Even though Bork’s defeat appears imminent, conservatives in the Administration and Senate continued to push Tuesday for a lengthy debate that would give them the opportunity for a full attack on the “special interests” whom they blame for Bork’s defeat.

Such an attack, they contend, would protect the next nominee from being examined as intensely as Bork was. Other Bork supporters, however, fear that a frontal assault on Bork’s opponents would only inflame the opposition and make the path of the next nominee more difficult. White House Chief of Staff Howard H. Baker Jr. urged Republican senators at a lunch-time caucus to keep the rhetoric in the debate calm, Republican staff members said.

Reinforcing Fear

Democratic senators spent much of the day Tuesday trying to reinforce the fear that a strident debate could harm the next nominee. “Just like there are guys on their side who want to have guerrilla warfare, there are guys on my side,” Judiciary Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. told reporters. Already the chances of a second nominee being confirmed this year are only “possible, not probable,” and a lengthy debate on Bork would lengthen the odds, Biden said.

Biden and Byrd, noting that Reagan had said Monday that the Senate should vote on Bork this week, offered Tuesday to begin the debate “immediately.” After several hours of closed-door discussions, Republican leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) turned down the Democratic suggestion.

“There are some who just don’t want to vote on it this week on this side,” Dole said, adding that there will be further negotiations and that there is still a possibility of debate beginning today.

Reflecting the desire for lowered rhetoric, Sen. Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.), complimented Biden for conducting fair hearings for Bork in the Judiciary Committee. “You have to understand that a great part of the impetus for this (debate) comes from the three children of Judge Bork and his wife, who would like it explained that their father and husband was not the man portrayed” by opponents.

Bork and his wife, Mary Ellen, left town over the weekend and had not yet returned Tuesday. A friend said they were “just relaxing,” reading no newspapers and watching no television.

Meanwhile, at the Justice Department, Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III ordered aides to stop feeding speculation about likely candidates to replace Bork as the nominee for the seat vacated by the retirement of Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr.

A department source said that Meese regarded stories about the likely next nominee as “unseemly” while Bork’s name is still before the Senate and “self-defeating” in that they provide potential foes with candidates to begin investigating.

If there is a prolonged battle over the next nominee and no one is confirmed before the Senate recesses late in the year, Reagan could give his choice a “recess appointment” to the court, one Administration strategist noted.

If a Supreme Court seat is vacant when the Senate is not in session, the President can appoint a nominee to serve until it reconvenes. Once the Senate reconvenes, however, the President would have to nominate the appointee formally. He would then face Senate confirmation. If such an appointment were made after Congress adjourns this year, the appointee would face confirmation in a presidential election year.

Staff writer David Lauter contributed to this story. James Gerstenzang reported in New Jersey and Ronald J. Ostrow and Lauter in Washington.