Bush Campaign Confident of Overwhelming Victory

After his trouncing of Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole in Saturday’s South Carolina primary, Vice President George Bush appears to be headed for such a lopsided victory in Tuesday’s showdown that confident officials in the Bush campaign say victory in their quest for the Republican presidential nomination has now become all but inevitable.

And Bush himself, beaming with optimism and looking beyond the fight for the nomination, is telling supporters that if GOP primaries and caucuses in 17 states--14 of them Southern and Border states--go as expected, “you’re looking at the next President of the United States.”

Even Dole’s campaign aides, conceding their candidate is likely to be overwhelmed Tuesday, say his main goal is to win enough of the 712 delegates at stake on Super Tuesday to stay alive and enough time to get his sputtering campaign back on track.

Then, they say, Dole can focus on the remaining contests in Midwestern and Western states, where polls show he is relatively stronger.

If Bush rolls up huge margins in the Super Tuesday states and uses that momentum to win the Illinois primary a week later, he will be within several hundred delegates of the 1,139 needed for nomination. At that point, campaign officials in both the Bush and Dole camps agree, the vice president would have a virtual lock on the nomination.

Only a month ago Bush was reeling from a third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses, behind former religious broadcaster Pat Robertson and Dole, who handily finished first. But the vice president, with much better financial and organizational resources than Dole, came storming back to win the New Hampshire primary a week later and has been out front ever since.

Bush campaign aides have suggested the vice president will win all but two or three of the Super Tuesday states and capture at least 500 delegates. A Dole campaign adviser who did not dispute that assessment said he had heard “estimates of up to 550 and 600 delegates.”

Recent polls indicate Bush is likely to win several of Tuesday’s contests by margins as large as his 48.4% to 20.6% victory over Dole in the South Carolina primary.

Bush holds huge leads in all but one of the 11 Southern and Border states polled from Feb. 19 to Feb. 27 by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Roper Organization. The poll showed Bush heading Dole off with double-digit leads in 10 states from 45% to 31% in Georgia to 60% to 18% in Texas. The only state where Dole was ahead--with a 39%-34% lead over Bush--was North Carolina, home state of the senator’s wife, former Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Hanford Dole.

Crucial to Kemp

Neither of the other two Republican candidates, Robertson and Rep. Jack Kemp of New York, is a serious threat to win the nomination. Super Tuesday could be Kemp’s last stand. He finished a dismal fourth with 11.5% of the vote in South Carolina after campaigning heavily in the state.

In none of the 17 Super Tuesday states do polls show Kemp with as much as 10% of the vote. On the other hand, Robertson, who finished a close third in South Carolina with 19.1% and who polls show has double-digit support of under 20% in all the Southern and Border states, could win enough support from evangelical Christians to cut into Bush’s harvest of delegates.

With the stakes so high, Dole stepped up his attacks on Bush in the final days before Tuesday’s contest, airing a new television commercial that blasts the vice president for his role in the Administration’s covert plan to sell arms to Iran in exchange for help in gaining the release of American hostages in Lebanon.

The ad says Bush “led the terrorism task force which said America would never sell arms for hostages. As he was saying those words, Bush approved selling arms to the ayatollah.”

Ridicules Explanation

The ad accuses Bush of changing “his story” on his role in the affair nine times and ridicules his explanation that he knew little of the details of the Iran-Contra affair because he was “out of the loop.”

Bush dismisses the Iran-Contra affair as an “inside the Beltway issue”--important only in the capital--and his campaign spokesman, Peter Teeley, says that Dole’s allegations could boomerang in the South because “an attack on the vice president on Iran-Contra is an attack on the President.”

What is behind Bush’s apparently commanding surge in a contest that, only a few weeks ago, appeared to him to be too close for comfort?

According to pollster Richard B. Wirthlin, who has long monitored public opinion for the White House and now is also working for the Dole campaign, polls show Bush is riding the crest of a towering wave of support of President Reagan.

A new Wirthlin poll shows Reagan’s approval rating among Republicans stands at 78% to 80% in the nation as a whole, with a whopping 84% approval rating in the South. And especially among Southern Republicans, Wirthlin says, the vice president has the advantage of being viewed as a surrogate for Reagan.

Identifies With Reagan

Campaigning in the South, the vice president has closely identified himself with Reagan at every opportunity, repeatedly referring to “the Reagan-Bush Administration” and “the Reagan-Bush revolution.” He has constantly emphasized strong defense and anti-communist positions that are pleasing to Southern ears.

Since his victory in the Feb. 16 New Hampshire primary, Bush has become a much more cautious campaigner. It was a style he employed before his defeat in the Feb. 8 Iowa caucuses but abandoned for more press conferences and informal campaigning in New Hampshire.

As the campaign moved South, he dropped his “see me, touch me, feel me” campaign for a more Reaganesque, imperial candidacy. Cloaking himself in the vice presidency, he is constantly surrounded by Secret Service agents.

He speaks only to carefully controlled audiences and makes himself generally inaccessible to the press. Photo opportunities have abounded, but reporters seldom have been permitted close enough to ask questions.

The vice president, who appeared to be on edge in New Hampshire, has been much more relaxed and confident in the South. For the first time since the Iowa defeat, he has occasionally offered jokes at his own expense.

Asked About Connally

At an airport press conference when he arrived in Atlanta recently, Bush was asked if former Texas Gov. John B. Connally’s endorsement of Dole would hurt Bush in that state, whose 111 delegates are the largest bloc at stake on Super Tuesday.

“I don’t think that will hurt me in Texas,” Bush said, grinning. “It’s my home state--one of many.” The reference was to Bush’s claim in New Hampshire that he was the local candidate because he has a home in neighboring Maine.

Bush’s surge in the South has left Dole apparently at a loss for a response. He has scurried from one state to another seeking support, with little evidence of an overall strategy.

Last Thursday, for example, while Bush was campaigning in South Carolina, Dole spoke at a conference on drug abuse in Washington--the only presidential candidate to do so.

The mood of the Dole campaign is as dark in the days before Super Tuesday as it was bright only a month ago, when he won the Iowa caucuses and felt confident as New Hampshire voters prepared to go to the polls.

Bush Increases Lead

With public opinion surveys showing Bush increasing his lead to 30 percentage points or more in some of the Super Tuesday contests, Dole aides say they hope the senator can win enough delegates to keep his candidacy alive.

“The South is clearly not our battleground,” said Bill Lacey, Dole’s chief political strategist. “By a 2-1 margin, it’s our worst region in the country. We have a realistic objective of getting from 180 to 200 delegates and living to fight another day.”

Wirthlin, Dole’s pollster, believes the senator “will do better than many people think.” He conceded “it could be all over” if Bush sweeps Super Tuesday and then wins the following Tuesday’s primary in Illinois, where 92 delegates are at stake.

On the other hand, Wirthlin said Dole could survive even if Bush won as many as 500 Super Tuesday delegates. Dole could “possibly” climb back into the race by winning in Illinois, Wirthlin said, “where Dole is behind, but not by the 28 to 30 points he’s behind in some of the Super Tuesday states.”

Dole is basing his comeback hopes after Super Tuesday on Wirthlin’s contention that Republicans voting in later contests in the Midwest and West are less conservative than Southern Republicans and not as enamored of Reagan.

Republican voters on Super Tuesday, he said, will be “rock-ribbed conservatives, and the focus will be on who is closest to Reagan or wearing the Reagan mantle. And Bush is clearly the winner there.”

To Step Up Attack

In his comeback drive, Dole can be expected to step up his attack on Bush on two issues where Wirthlin’s polls show the vice president is vulnerable: leadership and the Iran-Contra scandal.

Wirthlin said voters who say they would hesitate to vote for Bush usually cite what they view as his weak leadership and his participation in the decisions leading to the Reagan Administration’s sale of arms to Iran and the diversion of profits to Nicaragua’s Contras.

But Rich Bond, Bush’s national political director, has told Bush campaign staffers that it will be virtually impossible for Dole to make a comeback after Super Tuesday. Both campaign resources and the political calendar, Bond says, are working against the senator.

Bush, who has been far in front of Dole in campaign financing since the outset of the race, had $9.1 million on hand at the end of January, compared to Dole’s $3.5 million, according to the most recent Federal Election Commission records.

And the calendar apparently will also work against Dole. After Illinois, the next major primary will be on March 29 in Connecticut, where Bush grew up, and the state’s 35 delegates figure to go mostly to him.

Banking on Wisconsin

Dole is banking on winning the following primary on April 5 in Wisconsin, where 47 delegates are at stake. But next comes the April 19 primary in New York, where Bush is strong and 102 delegates are at stake. Dole failed even to file delegate slates in 23 of New York’s 34 congressional districts and apparently could win only 33 delegates at the most.

Bush also leads Dole in the next big primary--on April 26 in Pennsylvania, where 78 delegates will be selected.

“Heading into May,” Bond said, “we could be dangerously close to the magic number” of 1,139 delegates needed for the nomination.

Barring a dramatic comeback by Dole or unforeseen strength by Robertson, Bush’s aides believe the vice president could cinch the nomination before the final primaries on June 7--California, New Jersey, New Mexico and Montana--and June 14, when North Dakota Republicans will select the final 16 delegates to the Republican National Convention.

Staff writer Cathleen Decker contributed to this story.