Primary Victory Stands as Big Challenge for Buchanan : Republicans: Bush’s rival acknowledges he must ‘start winning some gold medals.’ He faces a formidable obstacle in Super Tuesday states.

After finishing with 30% or more of the vote in four Republican presidential primaries, Patrick J. Buchanan finds himself confronted with a new challenge: finding a primary where he can win outright.

Operating on what he called “gut instinct,” Buchanan on Thursday began an anxious state-to-state dash for attention and votes amid uncertainty within his campaign about where his chances were best for a breakthrough.

“We’re going to have to start winning some gold medals,” Buchanan acknowledged to supporters at a fund-raising luncheon here.

The possibility that Buchanan may be at high tide seemed to have a calming influence on the Bush campaign. For the first time in days, the President declined to respond to Buchanan’s attacks, and said that when their often-angry contest is over, he and Buchanan would be able to kiss and make up.

“I’ve always been able to get together with people,” Bush said, adding, “I’m sure” such would be the case when his rivalry with Buchanan is ended.

Sensing that the eight Republican contests in the Super Tuesday states next week present Buchanan with a formidable obstacle in his search for a victory, Bush strategists are even planning to cut back on the campaign. The President’s Southern trip, which was originally being planned as a six-day journey that would keep him campaigning until the eve of the voting, may be cut back by two days.

Buchanan, meanwhile, plans appearances in virtually every Super Tuesday venue. His aides regard Mississippi and Louisiana as the two most promising battlegrounds in Tuesday’s primaries. But with his campaign also wary of allowing Bush an unambiguous victory, he was to travel to Texas--an acknowledged Bush stronghold--and Massachusetts as well.

Buchanan’s aides still rate his chances for an upset victory as best in the Michigan primary on March 17. A senior Bush campaign official acknowledged Thursday that the Midwest will present a big challenge “because the American people just don’t seem to like George Bush anymore. I think we are in trouble, not because of (Buchanan), because of us.”

But by conceding that Buchanan can win 30% anywhere, the Bush campaign in effect is taking a psychological gamble that the pressure will now revert to Buchanan to prove on Super Tuesday that he can improve his performance.

Buchanan stepped up his rhetorical assault Thursday, describing the President as an impotent leader at the mercy of a liberal Congress.

Using mocking terms to describe Bush’s overwhelming defeat Wednesday at the hands of a House that defeated his budget proposal by a near 10-1 margin, Buchanan proclaimed at a news conference in the Oklahoma state capital that Bush was “politically, as weak as a kitten.” The vote was an “act of derision and contempt,” Buchanan said.

“They are yesterday and we are tomorrow,” Buchanan said of Bush and his backers, “because we have vision, and they do not.”

Bush, offered an opportunity to engage Buchanan, declined.

With the exception of what has become a routine criticism in his campaign speech of those who “want to build a fence around America” and fend off competition from foreign trade--a political set that includes Buchanan--Bush made not even a veiled reference to his challenger on Thursday.

Speaking with reporters at the end of a 20-minute jog on the track at the eerily empty University of South Carolina football stadium, he was asked whether he was disappointed with the tenor of the Buchanan campaign.

It was a game he wouldn’t play.

“I’m pleased with the tone of ours,” he said.

The President’s campaign appears increasingly confident that it can hold the line in the South. In South Carolina, it launched a new radio ad in which South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond defends Bush for signing the Civil Rights Act of 1992. The ad responds to an earlier Buchanan commercial denouncing the President for signing a “quota bill.”

In the ad, the South Carolina senator, a longtime opponent of racial quotas, says the Buchanan ad “does not contain a grain of truth.” He says that Bush vetoed an earlier “quota bill” but that the final version signed by Bush does not include quotas.

“I know, because I would never support racial quotas, and I stood with our President, and I’m still proud to stand with him today,” says Thurmond, who is scheduled to stump for Bush in six South Carolina cities today.

Bush supporters have also sought to take advantage of a gender gap in GOP voting so far, airing commercials citing a newspaper column written by Buchanan as evidence of his hostility toward women.

Buchanan aides said they would counter with new radio ads stressing that the candidate had merely endorsed the right of women to choose family life over the workplace and would, at least by implication, accuse Bush of embracing “the agenda of radical feminists.”

Bush was also warmly received by the Home Builders Assn. of South Carolina on Thursday when he reiterated his proposal for a $5,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers and a cut in the capital gains tax.

But at other times, some in the audience mustered only unenthusiastic applause.

Steve Jones, sitting in the back of a crowd of 1,000 to 1,500 people, said he was not sure whether he would vote again for Bush, as he did in 1988.

“Buchanan has one or two issues I like, truthfully. His comment that we’re sending millions of dollars every week to foreign aid. That doesn’t make sense when our economy needs help,” he said.

Harry Walsh of Civil Engineering in Columbia, said Bush’s speech was “what I wanted to hear--if he’ll perform. I’d still like someone more like Reagan but Bush is the closest we’ve got,” he said.

Times staff writer Sonni Efron contributed to this story from Columbia, S.C.