Weather Puts a Chill on GOP Politicking in N.H.

Sunday night was to have been the unofficial opening of the New Hampshire Republican primary race, with eight GOP contenders gathered at a state party dinner to showcase their political wares.

The dinner would have been the first occasion at which all the major candidates projected their messages to a statewide television audience and 1,000 of the party faithful paying $150 each for dinner and political entertainment.

Instead, three of the top candidates were stranded in Washington by a paralyzing blizzard and ended up addressing the gathering by telephone as disembodied voices.

Sens. Bob Dole of Kansas and Phil Gramm of Texas and publisher Steve Forbes appeared electronically at the Center of New Hampshire convention hall, depriving the evening of most of the expected drama.

They and five other candidates delivered nine-minute statements without rebuttal. There was none of the give-and-take of a genuine debate, and at the end the race appeared frozen where it had been when the evening began, with Dole the unchallenged leader and the others trailing far behind.

One of those who made it to Manchester, commentator Patrick J. Buchanan, wisecracked: “I understand some of us are snowbound and frozen in the ice down in Washington, D.C. So what else is new?”

With his typical sarcasm, Buchanan said that Dole was “snowed in at the White House with Bill Clinton. Steve Forbes is up at his estate [in New Jersey], I hear. A couple of the polo ponies took up sick over the weekend. And I understand Phil Gramm can’t get out of Delaware tonight.”

The last crack referred to Gramm’s support for a Delaware effort to move its primary ahead of New Hampshire’s traditional first-in-the-nation vote, an unmentionable sin up here.

Dole, who spoke last, targeted most of his remarks at President Clinton while the others took aim at the Senate leader.

He said that Clinton’s solutions to the nation’s problems are “more spending, more taxes and more government.”

Dole promised “fundamental conservative change,” beginning with a balanced budget.

Former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander thanked Dole for his many years of government service but said his place was in the Senate, not the White House.

“It may be Bob Dole’s turn, but it’s not Bob Dole’s revolution,” he said, referring to the GOP drive to balance the budget and shrink the role of the federal government.

Alexander has been trying to make an impact here with the plea that he’s the only true outsider in the race and the candidate with the best chance of beating Clinton.

But even his state campaign chairman, Concord lawyer and party activist Tom Rath, admits that Alexander has yet to break through.

“We haven’t done much to move the horse race,” Rath conceded in an interview last week, noting that the Feb. 20 primary is a scant six weeks away. “We’re at that point in the campaign when we have to stop saying what we’re going to do and go out and do it.”

Assessments of where the race stands today in New Hampshire are surprisingly consistent.

Dole is the clear front-runner, according to recent polls, with about 30% of the vote. Forbes, Buchanan, Gramm and Alexander are far behind, each with about 8% to 10% support.

“It’s Dole’s to lose, I mean big time,” said Dick Bennett of the American Research Group polling service in Manchester. “I see Dole just trouncing everybody.”