Dukakis Attacks Critics as Using McCarthyism : Bush Has Problems With 2 Key Groups: Jews and Workers

For all the colorful campaign pictures and bright accounts of his stump performances, George Bush has flown into turbulence as he tries to broaden the GOP base of support.

In particular, this week Bush found himself on the wrong side of two coveted groups of voters--Jews and blue-collar workers.

Those are potential swing Democrats whom Bush has patiently wooed, trying to cast off stereotypes of Republican indifference to their concerns. As the Bush campaign sees it, in the hands of such voters may lie the outcome of a tight election.

“The politics of inclusion” is a nouveau GOP slogan that Bush has admired and adopted.

So it was embarrassing and disappointing for Bush, as the week drew to a close, to find in his own midst--and be forced to fire--someone accused of anti-Semitism.

Worse for the campaign, the fired man, Jerome Brentar, was co-chairman of the vice president’s Coalition of American Nationalities, a group trying to forge ties to ethnic voters.

“He wasn’t on my staff. It was an advisory committee,” Bush said Friday by way of explanation. “ . . . Let me be very clear. I am the one who in my speech in New Orleans said I am going to speak out against bigotry wherever it takes place.”

It was likewise disappointing and embarrassing for the vice president to find himself under attack by blue-collar union workers this week.

Avoids Tractor Plant

So vigorous and unsightly were protests of shipyard workers in Portland on Tuesday that his campaign avoided sending the vice president into a Caterpillar tractor plant in Peoria on Friday, choosing instead to bring him to the much tamer small-town Pekin Marigold Festival 10 miles away.

Bush campaigned Friday in the important industrial states of Illinois and Pennsylvania.

As he has for most of three weeks running, he focused on three basic things--to present himself in photogenic situations, to emphasize the high points of the national economy and to press Democratic nominee Michael S. Dukakis on defense policy and domestic “values.”

Flubs Speech Lines

But, as has happened throughout the long campaign, Bush seemed to find it hardest to keep his concentration when riding high, like now. And twice Friday he flubbed his speech lines.

Of the Administration’s space-based Strategic Defense Initiative, Bush roared: “It’s a noble concept. It doesn’t put weapons at risk!”

Apparently what Bush meant is that SDI is intended as a protective shield against weapons and would not put people at risk.

He charged that, under Dukakis, a Massachusetts prisoner furlough program resulted in the release of a murderer to “rape and murder again.” In fact, there was no second murder.

But these were minor compared to the political problems Bush could have on his hands with Jews and labor.

Besieged With Charges

For weeks, he has carefully tried to address concerns of Jews; but, beginning at midweek in a Baltimore appearance before the Jewish community service organization B’nai B’rith, Bush was besieged with charges that at least three people appointed to his ethnic outreach campaign had controversial pasts and associations.

Brentar was involved in an organization that defended convicted Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk. According to the publication Jewish Week, he was also “active in groups that deny the Holocaust took place.” The publication quoted him as saying that he was not anti-Semitic.

Bush told reporters Friday he was not sure whether he had ever met Brentar and said his appointment had been made on the recommendation of the Republican National Committee.

Won’t Tolerate Bigots

“I just don’t want people associated with me who have a record of bigotry of any kind, racial bigotry, religious bigotry, whatever it is,” Bush said Friday.

And the labor vote also has been a challenge for Bush.

He tried to inch toward a more sympathetic stand toward workers this week, disclosing for the first time that he would soon propose an increase in the $3.35-an-hour minimum wage.

The national minimum wage has not been raised during the Reagan Administration. Bush initially offered no details of his proposal, except to say that it would be a compromise between the current level and the amount sought by Democrats in Congress, which ranges from $4.55 to $5.05.

Backs Wage Differential

“I’m going to do what is fair,” Bush told local interviewers Friday. Then he added: “I’ll tell you one thing though, I will insist that there be a minimum wage differential.”

The subminimum wage differential is a proposal supported by business but strongly opposed by labor organizations. Bush argued that a lower minimum for entry-level workers, such as black teen-agers, would keep them from being “priced out of training-wage employment.”

In a broader appeal to workers, Bush has grown increasingly expansive about how the middle class has benefited under Republican economic policies.

“Income up, house payments and taxes down. A typical homeowning family is almost $10,000 a year better off today than it would be under Democratic policies,” he said.

Obscenities Shouted at Bush

But that seemed beside the point to many union workers along the campaign trail. In Portland, Ore., they shouted obscenities at him, blaming the Administration for a rash of wage cuts--their wage cuts.