POLITICS 88 : Charges Dukakis and Others Encourage Sandinistas : Dole Opens Attack on Democratic Rivals

Kansas Sen. Bob Dole, struggling to maintain a political foothold as his presidential campaign sputters, Wednesday castigated Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis and other Democratic candidates as cynics whose “failure of nerve as well as failure of vision” have encouraged the progress of the Marxist regime in Nicaragua.

In the opening shot of an effort to project himself as a statesman rather than a failing presidential candidate, Dole blasted the Democrats for their criticisms of President Reagan and compared them, unflatteringly, to Democratic presidents like Harry S. Truman and John F. Kennedy.

“Every Democratic candidate has had an opportunity to stand up and be counted on an issue that is as symbolic for our time as Hitler’s brazen aggression was for an earlier generation,” Dole told guests at the Center for Strategic International Studies.

‘Shuffling and Sophistry’

“The call to defend the freedom of Nicaragua, which should be easy for them to answer, instead produces endless foot shuffling and sophistry.”

He accused Dukakis, the only Democrat named in his speech, of accommodating the existence of Soviet-backed states in this hemisphere and of projecting the argument that America “must not antagonize its enemies or exert itself too strenuously in behalf of its friends.”

“Perverse, but pervasive, this attitude has enveloped the Democratic side of the primary campaign like nerve gas,” the Senate minority leader added.

Dukakis spokesman Leslie Dach told the Associated Press that Dole’s remarks stemmed from his failure to stop Bush. “I guess Bob Dole is taking after Michael Dukakis because he’s accomplishing what Bob Dole can’t--beating George Bush in the polls,” Dach said, referring to a recent survey that showed Dukakis edging Bush in a hypothetical match-up.

The speech was the first move in a Dole strategy shift to criticizing Democrats rather than his favorite campaign target, Vice President George Bush, and attempting to keep his name afloat in a more visionary context.

Dole spokeswoman Mari Maseng termed the approach “Dole as a statesman.”

Tries to Shift Focus

“He’s trying to shift the focus away from . . . analysis of delegates and campaign tactics and lift the debate to a higher level,” Maseng added. “It’s a change of tone.”

The change occurs at a time when Dole trails Bush in pledged delegates by 178 to 788, according to the Associated Press, and is given virtually no change of surprising Bush in the April 5 Wisconsin primary.

Dole has come under pressure in recent weeks to suspend his campaign in a show of Republican unity, or at the very least to shelve his criticism of Bush. And, although he berated Bush as recently as this week in Wisconsin, Dole did not mention the Republican front-runner in Wednesday’s speech.

Dole spokeswoman Maseng said, however, that backing away from criticism of Bush was “not one of the strategies” in Wednesday’s speech.

“What he is trying to do is step back and lay out the challenges confronting America and what the President is going to have to deal with . . . no matter who’s the nominee,” she said.

Domino Effect Predicted

Dole, in his address, charged that success of the Cuban-backed Sandinista regime in Nicaragua would lead, domino-like, to more such states in adjacent countries.

“What will the Democrats say then?” he asked. “Well, we have learned to live with communist Nicaragua, just as we once learned to live with communist Cuba. It follows that we could learn to live with a communist Costa Rica, Panama or even a communist Mexico?

“The fact that they have chosen America--and not communism--as their hemispheric villain, shows how strange and potentially dangerous these times really are,” Dole said.

After the speech, Dole flew to Hartford, Conn., to address the state Legislature. Before he landed, however, top Connecticut GOP officials announced their backing of Bush for the presidential nomination.

State GOP Chairman Robert S. Poliner announced his support for Bush, saying: “Among Republicans, I believe George Bush has the best chance of winning the presidency in 1988.”

Bush and Dukakis are heavily favored to win most of the delegates in Tuesday’s presidential primary in Connecticut .

A poll published Wednesday by the Hartford Courant showed Bush favored by 64% of likely GOP voters, while his nearest rival, Dole, is the choice of 20%. The margin of error for the random sampling of 432 likely Republican voters is 5.5 percentage points.