POLITICS ’88 : CAMPAIGN ’88 : Bush Strategy Outlined
Bush’s campaign manager said he did not expect the vice president to jump ahead of Dukakis soon and contended his summer strategy was to avoid falling so far behind that the vice president would be out of the race by the fall.
Lee Atwater, speaking at a strategy session for Southern Republican leaders in Charleston, S.C., said the Bush campaign welcomed Dukakis to campaign in the South, arguing that the more the Democrat campaigned in Dixie, the more it would help the vice president.
With polls showing him running ahead of Bush nationwide, Dukakis last week took a campaign swing through seven Southern states.
The Bush campaign, meanwhile, has been trying to portray Dukakis as a strident liberal who is too far to the left for most of the country.
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