‘92 REPUBLICAN CONVENTION : One-Liners Fly Fast and Furious as Both Sides Aim to Get in Last Zinger : Potshots: They come from every corner--from candidates to convention vendors. And the best of the put-downs can affect the course of a campaign.

It is the way to score big when the whole world is watching, the surest technique to knock down an opponent, get on television and--just maybe--sway millions of voters to a different way of thinking.

It is the good ol’ zinger. One-liners, made-for-TV sound bites and arduously crafted political potshots have been whizzing through--and toward--the Astrodome all week. The best are remembered years later and can affect the course of a campaign. Don’t try to define them: You know them when you hear them.

Here is Patrick J. Buchanan mocking the Democratic National Convention as “a giant masquerade ball where 20,000 radicals and liberals came dressed up as moderates and centrists in the greatest single exhibition of cross-dressing in American political history.”

There is Jeb Bush declaring of his embattled father, the President: “He’s fired up. He eats nails for breakfast.”

Or take Pat Robertson ridiculing Democratic nominee Bill Clinton: “When it comes to defense, Slick Willy talks like John Wayne but acts like Beetle Bailey.” Or Marilyn Quayle: “. . . Remember, not everyone joined the counterculture. Not everyone demonstrated, dropped out, took drugs, joined in the sexual revolution or dodged the draft.”

Expectations are highest for Republican leaders. Their job, after all, is to inspire the faithful to forget all the polls that show George Bush behind, go back home and work for the GOP ticket. Vice President Dan Quayle, the butt of so many Democratic jokes, has been something of a joker himself this week. At one point he quipped to a Republican luncheon that Arkansas Gov. Clinton had challenged him to spell the word liberal . “Well, I can spell it,” Quayle assured cheerful Republicans: “C-L-I-N-T-O-N-E.”

That was a double-barreled volley--with the vice president criticizing his rivals’ politics while also making light of his own spelling faux pas , in which he added the letter “e” to the word potato .

Some zingers sound new, like Quayle’s spelling of “liberal.” Others are specially designed to answer other zingers.

Bush triggered a bizarre round of this sport when he called on American families to be “a lot more like ‘The Waltons’ and a lot less like ‘The Simpso” soon after he arrived in Houston. The Simpsons’ revenge became Step 2: On the animated TV show Thursday, the make-believe Simpsons watch saucer-eyed as the President calls their name. Says Bart: “Hey, we’re just like the Waltons--both families spend a lot of time praying for the end of the Depression.”

Ronald Reagan partook in some spirited back and forth on the convention’s opening night, in a jibe that echoed all the way back to the 1988 campaign. To the delight of GOP true-believers, the former President declared of Clinton: “Governor, you’re no Thomas Jefferson.” The potshot harked back to a vice presidential debate four years ago, when Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Tex.) wounded Quayle by saying: “Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy,” in a put-down that will be remembered for years.

Certainly, Republicans are not the only ones who get to play, even during their own convention. Clinton joshed to reporters Wednesday that Bush and Quayle are “running on the Christopher Columbus theory. Give us (another) term and we’ll discover America.”

The Democratic nominee also tried to deflect some of the flak aimed at his wife, Hillary, lecturing that Bush was acting as if he were “running for First Lady instead of for President.”

Some of the boldest attempts at verbal immortality have come from the anonymous ranks of souvenir vendors and delegates.

“If Bill Clinton is the answer, it must be a real stupid question,” declares one T-shirt circulating in the Astrodome.

Then there are the signs on the convention floor, like the one declaring: “Woody Allen is Clinton’s Family Values Adviser.” And there is the banner from some die-hard Tennesseans proclaiming: “Tennessee will not be Gored.”

To the political enthusiasts gathered here, the more common brand of one-liners makes for a treasury of entertainment, inspiration--and ammunition--for the next battle.

Consider Diana Ohman, Wyoming’s state superintendent of public schools. Each day, the Cheyenne resident showed up at the Astrodome with a pen and note pad to jot down “the little gems” that lurk in the ocean of verbiage.

One of her favorite GOP slogans: “We believe in serving people instead of soaking taxpayers.” She also squirreled away this put-down for Democrats that could come from the lips of a grizzled, nightclub veteran: “That reminds me of a baby who’s got a huge appetite on one end and no sense of responsibility on the other.”

Times staff writer Jenifer Warren contributed to this story.