NEWS ANALYSIS : GOP Targets Specific Issues and Groups in Key States : Campaign: With its strategy to include the tightly focused appeals, party appears to borrow a leaf from the Democrats.

With the economic tide running strongly against President Bush, GOP strategists are trying to keep their campaign afloat by thinking like Democrats of campaigns past. They are targeting key states with narrow-gauge issues aimed at appealing to influential interest groups.

The strategy is expected to be on view today when the President campaigns in Oregon and Washington. If all goes as planned, he will charge that Democratic nominee Bill Clinton’s concern for protecting the spotted owl, classified an endangered species, will worsen unemployment in the lumber industry, one of the underpinnings of the Northwest economy.

Likewise, in Michigan and Ohio, Republicans are claiming that the Arkansas governor’s support for a proposal to boost fuel efficiency standards for cars will take away jobs from auto plants that are major employers in both states.

These and similar targeted appeals are part of a significant shift in Republican presidential campaign strategy. Ordinarily, says Bush campaign pollster Fred Steeper, “we tend to be the party of Americans, and Democrats tend to be the party of interest groups.”

But in the 1992 campaign, Republican Bush is bidding hard for the backing of interest groups in what Steeper says “is an important part of our strategy.” He adds: “We think this is going to be a close election, and it could turn on finding the right issues in the right states.”

The targeted-issues strategy goes hand-in-hand with Bush’s use of the power of incumbency. Last week, he went to St. Louis to announce he had decided to sell 72 F-15 jet fighters to Saudi Arabia, a $5-billion boost for the plane’s manufacturer, McDonnell Douglas, and its workers in Missouri, a state that both sides believe could go either way in November.

Clinton has courted his party’s traditional constituencies, but his main argument is more broadly based and stems from widespread dissatisfaction with the state of the economy--an advantage Democratic standard-bearers in the last three presidential elections did not have.

Fully mindful of the Bush campaign’s target strategy, Democrats claim it won’t help him any more than a similar approach helped their losing candidates in the past.

“The Republicans sound like they are running the same kind of national campaign the Democrats usually run,” says Clinton pollster Stanley Greenberg, “which is to go for each special interest group in each state and miss the bigger picture.”

“It’s kind of a thread-the-needle strategy of winning very specific states rather than some overall plan,” Clinton campaign manager David Wilhelm says of the Republican thrust.

Republicans claim their targeting is only one part of an overall approach that includes two broader arguments: that the Democrats will make conditions worse and that Bush is more to be trusted in the Oval Office than Clinton.

But there is no doubt that their 1992 game plan is a far cry from the three previous campaigns, in which they took the high ground with a two-fold claim that the GOP was the best guardian of the national security and the most dependable manager of the national economy.

The end of the Cold War has taken the edge off the national security argument. And the impact of the recession has undercut the GOP claim to economic superiority. This has forced Republicans to forage for votes around the country, with one constituency group or another.

These are the most prominent issues and the states in which they are targeted:

* The spotted owl. Oregon and Washington. Clinton leads in both states but Bush aides claim they can narrow the gap by taking advantage of the concern among timber workers about the current federal court ban on logging in national forests that are the habitat of the endangered owl.

Senior campaign adviser Charles Black expects Bush to unveil a proposed change to the Endangered Species Act that, according to Black, would help “to protect the owl and save those jobs.” Clinton supports the present law.

* Fuel standards. Michigan and Ohio. In the industrial Midwest, where he needs to do well to make up for the anticipated loss of California, Bush seeks to turn current economic anxiety to his own advantage.

Banging his fist on the lectern at a Michigan stump speech last month, he warned that in the Wolverine State alone 40,000 workers would go “from the assembly line to the unemployment line” if Congress approves a legislative proposal, backed by Clinton, that would boost the auto-efficiency requirement to 40 miles per gallon, from the current 27.5 m.p.g. standard.

“In most places when you in are in a recession, jobs are more important to folks than the environment, but in those auto states it’s not even a close call,” Black says.

Clinton has recently edged away from the 40 m.p.g. standard, calling it only a goal.

* Defense contracts. California and Texas. Republicans claim Clinton’s proposal to trim defense spending by $60 billion would cost 1 million jobs, a point Bush has made in visits to both these key states where military contractors employ much of the work force.

Though the President lags far behind Clinton in recession-ridden California, Bush strategists hope to give the Democrats enough competition to force them to commit resources to the largest state. And unless Bush carries his adopted home state of Texas, most analysts believe he cannot win reelection.

* School Choice. Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In July, when Bush campaigned in both these battleground states with large Roman Catholic populations, the President emphasized what he called his “GI Bill” for children, which would permit parents to apply $1,000 federal vouchers toward tuition at private and parochial schools.

“I will not let you down, I will fight for the faith, I will fight for American families; we’re one nation under God and never forget it,” Bush declared. Clinton supports public-school choice but opposes the vouchers for private-school students, contending it would drain funds from already underfunded public schools.

These are the main target issues, but there are others Bush seizes upon when the opportunity arises.

In Humboldt, S.D., the President warned farmers that Clinton’s refusal to give unconditional support for the just-negotiated trade agreement with Mexico and Canada could cripple South Dakota’s wheat exports.

And in a speech last week to B’nai Brith’s international convention in Washington, D.C., aides acknowledged that the President had in mind the importance of Jewish voters in such key states as New Jersey and Illinois. In his talk, Bush contended that Israel’s security would have been jeopardized if Clinton had been President during the Persian Gulf crisis because he “waffled and wavered” on the U.S. response to the invasion of Kuwait.

The target-issues list will grow if Bush strategists have their way.

Democrats claim the Republican target strategy, which in many places argues that voters must choose between improving the economy or the environment, is a sign of weakness.

“They want to force people into making a choice they don’t want to make. They don’t have a bigger answer to problems facing the country,” says Clinton pollster Greenberg.

“We can make the argument persuasively that we have an economic game plan, we have a long-term strategy, that the economy is going to be strong and that voters won’t have to choose between the environment and jobs,” says Clinton campaign manager Wilhelm.

Clinton, whose candidacy was endorsed last month by the Sierra Club, sought to defuse the spotted owl controversy in the Northwest by promising to convene a Pacific Northwest forest summit to work out a legislative solution once he is elected. That idea was in line with a recommendation by union leaders in the Northwest.

“He has scrambled all over the place” on this issue, charges Bush adviser Black.

Times staff writer Douglas Jehl contributed to this story.

Today on the Trail . . . Gov. Bill Clinton in Portland, Ore., and Eugene, Ore.

Sen. Al Gore in Tulsa, Okla., Ft. Worth and Lubbock, Tex.

President Bush in San Diego, Colville, Wash., Medford, Ore., and Salt Lake City.

Vice President Dan Quayle in Salt Lake City; Boise, Ida., and Billings, Mont.