Bush Veers Sharply to Right in the South : Attacks Dukakis’ Proposed Navy Cutbacks, Links Self Closely to Reagan and Goldwater

Before hundreds of shipyard workers and a backdrop of U.S. Navy ships, Vice President George Bush reiterated his commitment to a beefed-up 600-ship navy Wednesday and for the first time took on a potential rival for November’s general election.

“Michael Dukakis tells us he wants to eliminate two full carrier groups--that’s a cut of 90 fighting ships,” Bush declared. “It’s a dumb idea!”

The remark typified Bush’s Southern campaign--telegenic, confident and resonant with the conservative themes of military strength and national security.

This is the conservative South, and Bush is flying his conservative colors.

South Carolina Primary

Bush ended two weeks of multi-

state Southern stumping on Wednesday to begin a concentrated effort in South Carolina, which holds its primary Saturday, just days before the numerous contests on Super Tuesday.

In his effort to stop Kansas Sen. Bob Dole and former religious broadcaster Pat Robertson in their tracks on Super Tuesday, Bush’s message has taken a sharp veer to the right. The vice president is also trying to stand more under the shadow of Ronald Reagan--and everywhere in the South he is accompanied by prominent conservative supporters.

Polls show Bush with dominant leads in most of the Southern states holding primaries or caucuses next week. Bush aides consider the vice president strong in Tennessee, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Texas, and his chief opponent, Sen. Bob Dole, weak in several other states.

Bush’s new strategy was evident Monday, when he stood in the courtyard of a Charleston, S. C., college, invoking the words of the modern-day father of conservatism.

Quotes Goldwater

“Our strength must keep the peace,” Bush said, quoting a 1964 speech by retired Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater. “And, if mankind has learned any lessons from history, it is that only the strong can be free.”

Near Bush on the podium stood Goldwater himself, leaning on a cane, nodding proudly. The former senator, now 77, flew to the South Monday, taped two commercials for the campaign and accompanied Bush on several stops, lending his considerable right-wing luster.

Bush invoked Goldwater’s name with abandon, with each mention reaping wild applause from the conservative crowds. Later, after Goldwater departed, former Navy Secretary John F. Lehman Jr. replaced him for visits to Navy port cities along the Gulf Coast.

Still predominant, however--and the biggest crowd-pleaser--are Bush’s virtually constant references to Reagan and what Bush has newly taken to calling the “Reagan-Bush Administration.”

In Tampa, at a ballroom reception, he told supporters that he would tick off for them the “key issues” of the campaign. First among the issues cited was Reagan.

“I am proud to have served with a President who has strengthened the defense of this country and has restored respect for America around the world,” Bush boasted.

And the farther South the campaign ventures, the more outspoken Bush becomes on the theme of communism and the need to defeat it. In South Carolina and later in Florida, Bush railed against communism in a new--and, from the crowd’s reaction, effective--speech.

“The interests of the world and the cause of peace are not served simply by the status quo, the containment of Marxist aggression,” Bush told Florida International University students in Miami on Tuesday, “but rather by the spreading of freedom and democracy.”

Assails Cuba, Castro

A substantial segment of the anti-communist theme was reserved for Cuba and Fidel Castro, whom Bush accused of “both supporting and exporting revolution.”

Apart from the broad themes, Bush has addressed regional interests as he moved across the South. In South Carolina, he talked textiles; in Florida, the concern was drugs, the object of an all-out and losing war in the Southern part of the state.

Bush praised the Administration’s moves to combat the smuggling of drugs into South Florida.

“We’ve made progress,” he said. “We have interdicted tons of narcotics coming in.” But he admitted the effort was incomplete.

“I don’t care if you blockade the United States--as long as you have the demand, they’re going to get these insidious narcotics in here.”

Rarely do the names of rival candidates arise, but Bush, in the wake of a string of jabs at him by Dole and controversial comments by Robertson, has added a new line to his stump speech.

“In this campaign, you’ve heard loose talk about a three-day invasion of Nicaragua or claims that are unsubstantiated about Cuban missiles,” Bush told the shipyard workers in Pascagoula. His allusion was to separate statements by Dole and Robertson, respectively.

“What it boils down to is who does have the experience, who does have the stability in a crisis,” he added.