Quayle Charges Dukakis Is Behind ‘Despicable’ Claims

Republican vice presidential nominee Dan Quayle, defending his running mate’s record, asserted Tuesday that Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis is prompting his allies to make “despicable” statements about the Bush-Quayle campaign.

In what appeared to be part of a broad effort Tuesday by Republican strategists to vigorously counter Democratic charges that Republican advertisements distort Dukakis’ record and are racist in nature, Quayle said his running mate, Vice President George Bush, “has built a career resting on unshakable integrity and fairness.”

“The personal attacks now being made on him by a desperate opponent are outrageous,” Quayle told an audience of Rotarians here.

“And the political sludge that is being dished out by Mr. Dukakis’ surrogates, and which I believe the governor is actively encouraging, is despicable.”

The Indiana senator, continuing his daily barrage against Dukakis, offered a line-by-line defense of Republican statements against Dukakis in several areas of contention: taxes, the Massachusetts pension fund, pollution in Boston Harbor, gun control and defense. He defended as accurate the GOP’s television advertisements on the subjects.

The Bush-Quayle campaign also held a press conference in Washington to defend its commercials and to present “fact sheets” and charts designed to make the point that it was Dukakis who was misleading voters.

Later in the day, Quayle departed from the day’s theme when he offered what sounded like a distinctly pro-choice answer when asked to clarify an earlier comment on abortion.

On Monday, he had been asked by a Missouri high school student whether, if his wife were raped and became pregnant, he would want her to have an abortion. Quayle, an ardent foe of abortion, answered:

“If that situation happened it would be tragic. It would be tough not only on Marilyn, it’d be tough on me and tough on our children,” he said. “If that happened, I would think that she would and I would hope that she would have . . . the child.”

On Tuesday night, Quayle was asked whether his answer left open his wife’s right to decide on her own--the central argument used by pro-choice advocates backing access to abortion for all women.

“That’s her choice,” he said. “I told her what I would like but it’s her choice. I can’t tell my wife what to do. . . . That’s the way the law of the land is right now.”

The Indiana senator noted that he has voted for a constitutional amendment that would overturn a Supreme Court decision allowing women to have access to abortions.

He then was asked whether that was the equivalent of deciding for his wife and all other women that they could not choose abortion.

“The constitutional amendment I voted for would have essentially put it back to the states and each state would have had a different situation,” he said.

The senator said his wife had a message for him after he answered the student’s question on abortion.

“She told me to quit answering hypothetical questions,” he said.