GOP Leaders See Revived Economy, Bash Democrats : Convention: Massachusetts Gov. Weld criticizes the party platform’s opposition to abortion. Keynote speaker Gramm credits Bush with ending the Cold War.

Four GOP leaders who may seek the White House themselves in 1996 delivered stinging attacks on this year’s Democratic ticket Tuesday and offered visions of a resurgent economy under President Bush, as Republicans at their party’s national convention sought to fan sparks of hope into fires of victory.

But one of Tuesday’s speakers, Massachusetts Gov. William F. Weld, struck the first conspicuously discordant note of the convention by breaking with Bush’s position and the party’s platform of uncompromising opposition to abortion. “I happen to think that individual freedom should extend to a woman’s right to choose. I want the government out of your pocketbook and your bedroom,” he declared.

Before the speech, he said its reference to abortion caused GOP convention officials to “gulp” when they saw the text.

His remarks were met with a mixed chorus of cheers and boos.

Keynote speaker Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas sounded what are emerging as central themes of the GOP campaign. He credited Bush with ending the Cold War and opening the way for increased emphasis on domestic problems, and he charged that congressional Democrats “have used their majority to throttle the President’s program and strangle the nation’s economy in a partisan gridlock the likes of which we have not seen in this century.”

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp, who has frequently pressed for more aggressive action on the economy, gave Bush unqualified support in his speech, saying, “Our party offers a more powerful vision--an America committed to prosperity, opportunity and jobs for our people.”

House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich of Georgia also joined in the chorus of attacks on the Democratic Party, saying it “rejects the lessons of American history, despises the values of the American people and denies the basic goodness of the American people.”

In a new indication that the Bush campaign is pursuing a have-its-cake-and-eat-it-too strategy of decrying personal attacks on Democratic foe Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary, while continuing to make them, placards appeared on the convention floor saying: “If Hillary can’t trust him--how can we?”

Since Bush’s convention managers made a point of noting previously that GOP rules give them control over all signs on the convention floor--they prevented abortion rights advocates from bringing any placards into the hall Monday when the platform was being adopted--the presence of the Hillary signs presumably had official approval.

Here were the day’s other key developments:

* Vice President Dan Quayle, with an eye on 1996, said voters will “see a new Dan Quayle” this fall and vowed not to “repeat the same mistakes that I made in 1988.” In a CNN interview, Quayle said, “I’m going to rely on my own political instincts. They got me where I am.”

* The troubled Bush campaign organization sought to sharpen its message by turning to two high-powered political veterans, including controversial media specialist Roger Ailes, to help oversee an often-aimless advertising team. The moves signal efforts by incoming White House Chief of Staff James A. Baker III to impose new discipline over a Bush team that can little afford to make more mistakes.

* In an interview broadcast Tuesday night, President Bush promised that voters would see “a lot of changes” in his Cabinet if he were to win reelection and held out the prospect that he might restructure “the executive branch itself.” Some aides said Bush was weighing a plan to announce that Baker would remain in the White House after the election to manage the economy.

* A procession of Republican governors, Cabinet members and other GOP leaders hammered away at what one called the “block-everything, do-nothing Democratic Congress.” They declared that Bush had already established himself as an instrument for change at the grass-roots level and defended his record on issues ranging from the environment, drugs and crime to economic growth and education.

* Top Bush advisers said their hopes had been lifted by the chorus of attacks on Clinton by former GOP candidate Patrick J. Buchanan and others Monday night. Citing weekend polls that showed Bush beginning to narrow Clinton’s lead, they expressed confidence that efforts to portray him as a traditional tax-and-spend liberal were at last striking their mark. “This shows the essential mistrust that people in this country have for the Democratic Party,” campaign counselor James Pinkerton said.

* Senior Bush campaign adviser Charles Black said Clinton will be vulnerable to GOP attack on the issue of family values because the Arkansas governor, at a fund-raiser sponsored by leaders of the Los Angeles gay community in May, delivered an emotional speech in which he vowed to lift the federal ban on homosexuals in the military and launch a massive federal program to combat AIDS.

Black, at a breakfast meeting with reporters, contrasted what he called “President Bush’s commitment on family values, which doesn’t believe you should have government preferences for homosexual lifestyle . . . versus Gov. Clinton, who went to California and spoke to the largest gay group there and tearfully embraced their agenda.”

Black said, “When it comes to discussing the social agenda and family values, that’s a legitimate issue.”

While the fundamental business of the convention is energizing this year’s Bush-Quayle ticket, many delegates are also casting their eyes ahead to 1996.

An Associated Press survey of more than half of the 2,210 delegates showed that Kemp is the clear choice to be the party’s 1996 presidential nominee. He was supported by 34% of the delegates polled, with Quayle a distant second with 9.8%. Baker, who is resigning as secretary of state to become chief of staff and chief campaign adviser, polled 6.6%, and Gramm, 4.9%. Several others drew scattered support and 25.7% of the delegates said they were undecided.

Sen. Phil Gramm

As part of the Bush campaign’s orchestrated effort to credit the President with the collapse of communism, Gramm cited the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, the liberation of East Germany and the breakup of the Soviet Union as results of “strong Republican leadership.”

“Two men more than any other people on the planet have been the catalysts for these changes,” he said, “and their names are Ronald Reagan and George Bush.”

Gramm said, “Ronald Reagan sighted the Kremlin in the cross hairs, but it was George Bush who pulled the trigger.”

Accusing the Democrats of wanting to “disarm” America, he declared that the last Democratic President, Jimmy Carter, had “decimated defense.”

In fact, the cuts in the nation’s defense spending began under a Republican President--Richard M. Nixon--and continued under another--Gerald R. Ford--until Carter began rebuilding Pentagon budgets in the last part of his term. Reagan dramatically accelerated the buildup.

Gramm praised Bush for putting together the international coalition against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and criticized the Democratic leadership in Congress for opposing the use of U.S. military force to drive Iraqi forces out of occupied Kuwait.

Some Democrats ultimately voted in support of force after a spirited debate praised by many Republicans, but Gramm characterized the episode this way: “Ultimately, we shamed enough Democrats in Congress into supporting the President.”

Had they not, the senator said, Bush, “using his constitutional powers, could have and would have acted without the support of Congress.”

Jack Kemp

Stressing “family values” and the GOP’s anti-abortion stand, Kemp said Republicans “don’t believe children are just mouths to feed . . . they are hearts, minds and souls for our future. And they deserve our protection not only after their birth, but before they are born.”

Republicans, he said, do not measure compassion “by the size of the safety net, but by the number of rungs on the ladder of opportunity. This is what distinguishes our party from the Democrats.”

The Democratic “new covenant” that Clinton espoused at the Democratic Convention in New York, he said, “is not new . . . it’s not a change. It doesn’t put people first, it puts government first; it doesn’t empower people, it empowers bureaucracy. It doesn’t encourage investment and growth, it spends . . . and spends . . . and spends.”

Kemp said New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo “gave away the Democrats’ game” at their convention when he said Clinton, as President, would have the “courage” to raise taxes.

“The Democrats call that courage--I call that crazy,” he declared. “In this economy, can you imagine anything more depressing and destructive than raising income tax rates and imposing a surtax? The Democrats’ plan won’t soak the rich, it’ll soak the poor, soak the middle class and drown our economy.”

Dan Quayle

Quayle, whose favorable ratings have dropped below 30% in some polls, is using the convention as a forum to try to redefine himself for a public that, surveys show, believes he is unqualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.

He has been granting interviews and making speeches in Houston, but his big chance will come Thursday night when he accepts renomination as the party’s vice presidential candidate in a nationally televised speech in prime time at the Astrodome.

“I hope by the end of the week that I will be able to once again communicate--and this time communicate directly with the American people,” said Quayle, who accuses the press of slanting stories against him. He told a CNN interviewer that he will talk about growing up in a small Indiana town and will emphasize the importance of hard work.

“I had a bad campaign in 1988 personally and I am not going to repeat the same mistakes that I made in 1988, and 1992 is going to be an entirely different campaign,” he said. “You are going to see a new Dan Quayle.”

In 1988, Quayle’s campaigning was rigidly controlled by handlers imposed by Baker, who ran the Bush campaign then as he will this time. Bush had not consulted Baker on the selection of the young Indiana senator, which Baker considered a political mistake.

Quayle, in the CNN interview, stressed that he will control his own campaigning this time. Despite reports that relations between the two have remained cool, Quayle insisted, “There is no animosity whatsoever between Jim Baker and myself. We have been good friends since 1980.”

Campaign Team

The decision by the Bush campaign to turn beyond its ranks for help reflects what sources described as Baker’s concern that the team’s communications and advertising efforts have been no more than mediocre. Officials said that Mitchell Daniels, a former top official in the Reagan White House, had been hired to impose political control over a Madison Avenue advertising team than until now has been given little guidance.

At the same time, Ailes, who was credited with suggesting the use of the Willie Horton case in the 1988 campaign, was said to have agreed to step up his role as an outside adviser to Bush and his campaign, although he made clear that he would not take a formal position in the operation.

A TV ad--made by a team not under Ailes’ direct control--spotlighted Horton, a black prison inmate who committed a violent crime after he had escaped from a Massachusetts furlough program. The ad was used with devastating effect against the 1988 Democratic nominee, Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis.

Ailes and Daniels have worked closely under Baker in the past, and their new roles extend a shake-up in which the incoming chief of staff has replaced key Bush advisers with his own trusted associates.

Ailes was a top-ranking strategist in the 1988 Bush campaign and exercised autocratic control of its advertising efforts. The New York adman has since served as an informal counselor to Bush, and senior campaign officials said he would now “be doing more” to provide advice about the course of the campaign.

In New York, Ailes issued a statement denying wire service reports that he had been enlisted in the 1992 campaign. But Bush aides said his role as a behind-the-scenes adviser would grow increasingly important as the election neared.

Daniels served as political director in the Reagan White House while Baker was its chief of staff. He was tapped by Baker four years ago to manage Dan Quayle’s vice presidential campaign.

Senior Bush advisers have complained bitterly about the quality of the television advertisements produced for Bush by a Madison Avenue team led by New Yorker Martin Puris. But they have acknowledged that the consultants, few of whom have campaign experience, have received almost no guidance from campaign chairman Robert M. Teeter and other senior officials.

The result has been a series of widely reported blunders. The advertising team was forced recently to refilm a Bush commercial after mistakenly using footage that showed the presidential seal--a tactic forbidden by law. And one script dispatched to the highest levels of the campaign included testimonials from Reagan and actor Kevin Costner--although neither man had agreed to participate.

Campaign press secretary Torie Clarke declined to comment on complaints about the advertising team. But she said Daniels would be assigned to “make sure that the right political notes and chords are struck in our advertising.”

Cabinet Shuffle

Bush’s statement about changing his team in a second term touched off a frenzy of speculation. Some Republican sources, who insisted on anonymity, named Kemp, Treasury Secretary Nicholas F. Brady, Energy Secretary James D. Watkins and Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan Jr. as among those most likely to be excluded from a second-term Cabinet.

A well-placed Administration official noted pointedly that “with any new Administration, there are likely to be changes.” But the official insisted that no firm decisions had been made about any second-term shake-up.

Those circulating rumors about the reshuffling seemed most motivated by a zeal to show that Bush was so committed to change that he was willing to sweep his Administration clean even of longtime associates.

Such an announcement, they suggested, would serve as a powerful signal of Bush’s commitment to a second-term domestic agenda. At the same time, it could elevate Baker to virtual deputy President status that would help voters to regard him, rather than Quayle, as Bush’s effective running mate.

Other Speakers

Many of the other speakers who addressed the convention Tuesday sounded themes that Bush has signaled he will use in the fall campaign against Clinton.

Jeanie Austin, co-chairman of the GOP, recalled Clinton’s complaint that Republicans sound like a broken record when they accuse him of “tax and spend, tax and spend.”

“Well, yes, we do say their song is still ‘tax and spend,’ she declared, “because their record is still stuck on tax and spend, tax and spend.”

Mayor Nao Nakasugi of Oxnard, Calif., sounding the family values theme, said that like his “mom and dad, more than half the families of Oxnard are Americans by choice, not by birth” and that for them “America is the promised land of opportunity where those who work hard get ahead; where achievement is admired and rewarded; where family is honored, and where the education of children comes first.”

Atty. Gen. Daniel E. Lungren of California accused Democrats of being soft on crime and of “trying to convince the pundits that whenever we Republicans raise legitimate concerns about wrongheaded Democrat crime policies, we should be shamed into silence. Well, we won’t!”

“When we begin to talk about crime, they trot out their liberal icon and invite the press to worship at the altar of righteous indignation. The icon is . . . Willie Horton. When they utter those two words, we Republicans are to bow down in a frenzy of mea culpas . Well, this is one Republican--and law enforcement official--who won’t be cowed,” Lungren said.

Times staff writers William J. Eaton, Douglas Jehl and Paul Richter also contributed to this story.