GOP Throws Script Away for Frenzied N. H. Finale

The Republican race for the presidency, a sluggish contest for months here, is heading for a frenzied finish with Vice President George Bush and Kansas Sen. Bob Dole running neck and neck and former religious broadcaster Pat Robertson making a serious bid for third place in a state where experts said he would not be a contender.

In the final week of campaigning, political fallout from the Iowa caucuses, a paralyzing winter storm and the sudden withdrawal of former Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. from the race have helped rewrite the script for a primary that the vice president once had been expected to dominate.

Not just close, the race is highly volatile, according to polls here. Bush lost a 20-percentage-point lead virtually overnight after his third-place finish in Iowa. And, while Dole shot upwards after his victory, many of his new supporters are indicating that they could change their minds again.

Bush, whose political prestige, if not his candidacy, is on the line, has dramatically altered his campaign style. He has gone from country club to country kitchen as he strains to re-establish a bond with ordinary voters. The vice president also launched his harshest attack to date on Dole, blaming the Senate minority leader for losing the battle to confirm Supreme Court nominee Robert H. Bork.

For his part, Dole is making fewer wisecracks about Bush as he strives to look both conservative and presidential in a state where people used to say he was too moderate and too much of a congressional insider to win.

In eight of the last nine Republican primaries, New Hampshire has chosen the man who went on to become the party’s nominee. That well could happen again. If Dole wins, he will be propelled by the mighty momentum of back-to-back victories in the first major tests of the campaign. If Bush wins, he rekindles his candidacy and heads South, where he has been regarded as the strongest GOP contender.

Robertson, meanwhile, now placed by the polls in a dead heat with New York Rep. Jack Kemp for third place, is tailoring his campaign to appeal to voters traditionally skeptical about mixing religion and politics. Robertson avoids talking about his long career as one of the giants in religious broadcasting and focuses instead on his skills as a businessman. His goal is to emerge from New Hampshire as the conservative alternative to Bush and Dole.

Must Beat Kemp, Du Pont

To succeed, Robertson must beat Kemp and former Delaware Gov. Pierre S. (Pete) du Pont IV. Du Pont, who has the support of the Manchester Union Leader, the state’s largest and most conservative newspaper, is nearly even with Kemp and Robertson in some polls.

A strong finish for Robertson, in a state lacking many evangelical voters, would validate his credentials as a contender, and make it much harder for his rivals to go on claiming that he is merely the candidate of the religious right.

“In New Hampshire right now, you could almost say there are two races going on. There is the one for the more mainstream Republican vote and one for the conservatives,” said Elsie Vartanian, the chairwoman of the state’s Republican Party.

So far, the contest between Bush and Dole has been more diplomatic than it was in Iowa. The character-baiting that went on there has been largely missing. On the other hand, Robertson and Kemp have begun to exchange angry words. Kemp charged Friday that the Robertson campaign is trying to tar him with the brush of moral permissiveness after leaflets appeared accusing Kemp of being soft on pornography and abortion.

Climactic Debate

Today, the candidates are headed for a climactic debate. Being held just two days before the primary, the debate offers New Hampshire voters their last chance to see all of the Republican candidates together. Moreover, it offers the candidates one of those opportunities to pull ahead on the basis of a few well-chosen words. Because it has happened before, people are holding their breath.

“If there ever was a race in search of a pivotal event, something for the voters to finally hang their hat on, this year is it,” said one GOP official here.

New Hampshire always has been Bush’s state to lose. He came in early, built the largest organization of any candidate, gained the support of the state’s popular and energetic governor, John H. Sununu, and jumped out to an early lead in the polls. From the outset, Bush’s greatest strength was his relationship with President Reagan, who receives a lot of the credit in New Hampshire for the state’s thriving economy.

But Bush never quite dispelled the suspicion among political observers here that his lead rested on uneasy support. Sure, people would associate Bush with Reagan, but many of them would also recall that they voted for Reagan over Bush in the 1980 New Hampshire primary.

“Voters are putting an asterisk after Bush’s name,” said pollster David Moore of the University of New Hampshire in an interview last September. Republican voters here, Moore said, are looking for a winner, someone who can beat the Democrats and keep the Reagan revolution alive. “If Bush doesn’t win in Iowa, look out,” Moore said.

Masking Doubts

Now, more than ever, Bush is trying to look like a winner, smiling a lot, kissing babies, throwing snowballs and gamely masking the doubts that are bound to come after suffering a big upset.

Occasionally, however, those doubts have shown through the vice president’s game face, and he has sounded more like a pleader than a leader.

“Maybe, in some ways, I’m a little more taciturn than I could be,” he said last week. “But, let me tell you, don’t take the private side of me for lack of passion, lack of conviction about the United States of America. There may be better orators out there, but, believe me, nobody believes more strongly.

“I don’t always articulate, but I always do feel, and I care too much to leave now. Our work is not done, so I’m working my heart out up here. I’m asking for your help.”

But most of the time Bush has been the happy warrior, taking a spin in an 18-wheeler while campaigning at a truck stop, driving a forklift, stopping to chat with the customers at Herbert’s Potato World in Nashua and Cuzzin Richies in Greenland.

The folksiness and accessibility are a reversal of the insulated inside-of-the-limo campaign Bush favored before the Iowa debacle forced him to take his case to the people. The new style is accompanied by more talk about the issues and how he differs from Dole on them.

He praises the recently signed nuclear arms treaty with the Soviet Union and contrasts his early endorsement of it with Dole’s belated support. He stresses his opposition to an oil import fee, which could bring higher heating oil prices in New Hampshire, and he reminds people that Dole said he could support such a fee.

Bush also took some shots early in the week at Dole’s plan for tackling the deficit, a budget freeze, but by the end of the week was offering his own freeze proposal.

Bush emphasises his experience. “Ready from Day One,” goes one of his campaign commercials. He returns, again and again, to his working “partnership” with Reagan. And he stresses the differences between experience gained inside the Administration and the kind, he says, that a legislator such as Dole acquires in Congress.

‘Make Decisions’

“In the executive branch, you make decisions. . . . You pull the switch. You choose. You live with your decisions. . . . You might make a wrong decision, You might make a mistake. But you go forward and you lead.”

But Congress is different, says Bush. “In Congress, you go along to get along. . . . Congress isn’t the real world. They don’t decide. It’s all one long continuing resolution.”

Bush portrays Dole as part of the problem in Washington today, as a ringleader of an irresponsible branch of government determined to thwart the will of the President and the people.

“Last year the President decided to veto the highway bill. . . . We needed 34 votes to sustain the veto,” Bush said Saturday at a campaign stop. “Bob (Dole) tried but to no avail. We wanted Bob Bork on the Supreme Court. The Senate says no, you can’t get anywhere.”

Earlier in the week, he blamed the budget impasse partly on Dole.

“In case you forget, passing a decent budget is Congress’ job. They’re so out of control they haven’t passed a decent budget in years. . . . This is a failure you can lay right at the doorstep of congressional leadership.”

Meanwhile, Dole got an unexpected boost when Haig announced Friday that he was quitting the race, after trailing the pack throughout the campaign, and throwing his support to Dole.

During the final week of the campaign, Dole is pushing much the same message that worked for him in Iowa: leadership, nurtured in small-town America, tested in wartime, and proven by a 27-year record in Congress.

He recounts his role in refinancing the Social Security system and his work in partnership with Reagan on tax revision. On the other hand, he glosses over one of the accomplishments he touted while campaigning in Iowa, his work on behalf of farm subsidies.

Midwest Image

If Dole’s victory in Iowa created one problem for him, it is the perception by some that he is the candidate of Midwestern agricultural interests.

Nevertheless, Dole is able to use his Midwestern background in other ways while campaigning here. He talks about the small-town values of thrift and compassion that he says undergird his push for a deficit-reduction plan that will not hurt the neediest recipients of government aid.

“I consider myself a conservative, and some people say conservatives don’t care about the homeless. Well, that’s not an accurate perception,” Dole said. “We need welfare reform. . . . We’re not going to throw money at the problem, but we understand that we do have a problem, that there are people out there who have nowhere else to go for help, and we’re going to do something about it.”

Lately, Dole has been doing his best to shore up his image as a conservative. His speech to the New Hampshire Legislature last week stressed his mistrust of the Soviets and, for the first time, he pledged to deploy the Strategic Defense Initiative, the space-based missile defense system.

Conservatism among the Republican candidates this year, however, tends to be something of a given. The candidates disagree more over solutions than problems, with all of them against new taxes and higher government spending, in favor of military aid to the Contras and opposed to abortion.

Moral Crusade

Robertson sets himself the furthest apart by styling his campaign as a moral crusade against the spread of communism abroad and various liberal influences at home. His approach risks exacerbating the high negative poll readings Robertson has received in many parts of the country. On the other hand, he continues to be the only Republican candidate who commands a truly fervent following.

But for the candidates like Bush and Dole who almost echo one another on issues, the question hanging in the frosty New Hampshire air is whether the sprint to the finish line will be a clean one. Or will the race once again get personal as each of the front-runners seeks to distinguish himself from the other?

“It can be a matter of damned if you do and damned if you don’t,” said Vartanian, the state party chairwoman, who has seen both candidates faulted for saying too little and too much.

Staff writer Cathleen Decker contributed to this story.