Midwest May Determine Buchanan Fate : Primaries: Big losses in Illinois and Michigan could mark his last stand. But polls show the President would still have a lot to worry about.

The outcome is not in doubt. Once again, the question posed in Tuesday’s Republican primaries in Illinois and Michigan will be how much of the electorate is angry enough at George Bush to vote for his competitors.

But more so than in any of the 15 previous presidential primaries, the answer this time may determine the fate of the underdog candidacy of former television commentator Patrick J. Buchanan.

Buchanan, whose campaign began in December to amused nods from much of the Republican hierarchy, has lasted long enough to turn amusement to fear. But he has come under ever-increasing criticism for staying in the race beyond last week’s Super Tuesday contests.

Former President Gerald R. Ford, a Michigan congressman for almost 25 years before he assumed the presidency, called two Detroit newspapers this week to declare that Buchanan’s continued presence was divisive and posed a threat to Bush’s chances to hold on to the White House.

Republican National Committee Chairman Richard N. Bond and a host of members of the House and the Senate echoed the call that Buchanan drop out. And a national poll commissioned by USA Today and CNN found that 57% of Republican voters think Buchanan, who has yet to win a contest, should pull out. The percentage was almost double the number in a mid-February poll.

Even Buchanan, campaigning in Michigan, suggested that his rationale for staying in the race--potential success--would not long exist without a victory.

“I will have to start winning primaries right away,” he told students in Lansing the other day.

Those stakes, and the sense among Bush’s partisans that this week could serve as a knockout blow to the challenger, have made the industrial twins of Illinois and Michigan into perhaps the most sought-after of the GOP primaries.

For Buchanan, the stresses on his campaign have produced a wildly gyrating week. On Wednesday, the day after he lost eight Super Tuesday contests, a muted Buchanan was pledging to soften his attacks on Bush when it becomes apparent that the President has sewn up the GOP nomination.

By Saturday, he was warning that his candidacy would become the seed of a new third party composed of irate Republicans--and he refused to rule out his participation in it in 1996. By Sunday, he was once again promising to support the party’s 1992 nominee.

Buchanan has been under a sustained assault by the Bush campaign, with much of the firepower spent in Michigan, where the 9% unemployment rate and discontent in the auto industry make the state seem like potential Buchanan country.

The President, who through most of the campaign has made only oblique references to his challenger, loosed a pointed television advertisement that derides Buchanan, whose campaign theme is “America first,” for owning a Mercedes-Benz.

“ ‘America first’ is not being received very well,” snickered Michigan Republican Party spokesman Bryan Flood, a Bush partisan.

Harry Veryser, Buchanan’s Michigan state director, sniffed in return that the Mercedes ad would have “zip” impact.

“People aren’t going to listen to that, because they aren’t worried about Mercedes-Benzes,” Veryser said. “They are worried about their taxes going up.”

Buchanan, never demure, countered the Mercedes ad with a commercial that accuses Bush’s campaign coordinators of working for foreign nations. “No wonder Michigan has lost 73,000 jobs,” the ad says.

The challenger also promised the auto industry that if he won the White House he would institute a 15% tax credit of up to $2,000 on the purchase of an American car.

But Bush trumped Buchanan, arriving in Michigan for his only day of campaigning to announce that he is scrapping environmental regulations opposed by the auto industry. He also pledged to fight any efforts to raise fuel-efficiency standards--legislation he said would “destroy the auto industry and cost American jobs.”

Polls going into the Tuesday primary show Bush with a commanding lead in Michigan and Illinois. A survey published in Sunday’s Chicago Sun-Times had Bush ahead in Illinois by a 79% to 15% margin.

The President got similarly optimistic news out of Michigan, where the Detroit News found Bush with a 71% to 21% margin over Buchanan. Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke is also on the Michigan ballot; the poll showed him with 2% support.

Those numbers suggest that Buchanan is falling below the roughly one-third of the vote he has garnered in the primaries thus far, but polls have occasionally misstated his support this year.

The challenger was making an effort late last week to persuade disaffected Democrats, particularly ethnic Americans, to come over to his side. In both states, the primaries are open to members of either party.

Analysts suggested, however, that the number of crossovers may be limited because Democrats will be attracted by their own roundhouse race between Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, former Massachusetts Sen. Paul E. Tsongas and former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr.

Also weighing against Buchanan are the moderate tendencies of voters in both of Tuesday’s primary states. In Illinois in 1988, Bush quashed the threatening challenge by Kansas Sen. Bob Dole in the primary and won the general election by a slim margin over Democratic nominee Michael S. Dukakis. Although Michigan is not as predictable, Republicans there have also been somewhat moderate.

Even with Bush leading Buchanan handily in the primary polls, there remained little good news for the President.

A poll of Illinois voters published in Sunday’s Chicago Tribune showed that only 37% of likely voters had confidence that Bush could solve the nation’s economic woes. That percentage was just above the 33% who had confidence in Congress.

Additionally, only 31% said they hoped Bush would win reelection, and fully half of the respondents opposed a second term. The remainder were uncertain.

During a White House press conference earlier this week, Bush expressed confidence that voters who sided with Buchanan to protest Bush’s presidency would ultimately return to the fold in the fall.

While many Bush partisans were demanding that Buchanan leave the race, Bush sought to remain above that dispute.

“You don’t have to be a . . . rocket scientist” to know that he would rather not have an opponent, the President said.

But, he added: “Let each person on both sides sort out their own fate.”