GOP Class Warfare Erupts as Candidates Assail Forbes

A funny thing has happened on the way to the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary: Class warfare has erupted in the GOP.

The target, needless to say, is Steve Forbes.

Texas Sen. Phil Gramm calls him “Richie Rich.” Patrick J. Buchanan sneers at his friends “down at the yacht basin.” Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole jabs at his helicopter commute to his Manhattan office.

With Forbes having rocketed in the polls as their own campaigns stall or sputter, the other contenders have begun attacking the publishing tycoon for his wealth and lavish lifestyle in an ironic turnabout for a party that continues to draw its core support from upper-income Americans and which has long been identified with business and entrepreneurship.

Indeed, the salvos against Forbes, and the depictions of his flat tax as a break for the “idle rich,” ring like lyrics from the enemy’s song sheet.

It was not long ago, for example, that Republican hopeful Gramm was telling audiences that he wanted to defeat President Clinton “to end this politics of class warfare and envy in America once and for all.”

The opening of class warfare themes within the party has sparked loud protests within Republican ranks. Talk-show host Rush Limbaugh, for example, has complained that the Republican candidates are “sounding like Richard Gephardt,” the House minority leader.

But the criticisms of Forbes have also put the GOP presidential hopefuls in a dicey position. Not only does the GOP have a substantial upper-income constituency, but the supply-side economics that the party embraced under Ronald Reagan holds firmly to the idea that it is the wealthy, and particularly wealthy investors, who are the chief engine of economic growth.

Forbes’ rivals must therefore tread the fine line of attacking him without appearing to bash supply-side ideology or personal prosperity itself.

‘A Bag of Money?’

The swipes at Forbes and his vast personal fortune--valued at more than $400 million--have taken several forms in past weeks, from demands that he fully disclose his tax returns to complaints that he is trying to buy the election to flat-out name-calling. (Dole: “What else is this fellow except a bag of money?”)

The owlish publishing magnate has tried to deflect his opponents’ gibes with humor or dismiss them as “diversions.”

“Dole spent 35 years on the public payroll and became a multimillionaire,” Forbes is fond of saying. “But I won’t use the class warfare argument against him.”

“It’s just off the subject of the campaign, which is how to get America moving again,” added Gretchen Morgenson, Forbes’ press secretary.

But his competitors contend it is a legitimate issue that sheds light on Forbes’ fitness for office. Can a man who owns his own island, vacations at a family chateau in France, flies in a jet called the Capitalist Tool and could gain in the range of $150,000 to $200,000 a year from his own 17% flat-tax proposal adequately represent the American people?

Forbes is “from a very limited Wall Street, inherited-wealth world, and has a world view that is very limited. It’s fair for other candidates to point at that and talk about it,” said Bryan Flood, an aide to former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander.

Still, Flood was quick to add that “Lamar isn’t attacking Steve Forbes because he has money, but because he lacks real world experience.

“We’re all for tax cuts,” he said. “Lamar is as much a supply-sider as anyone in this race.”

Risk in Attacks

That disclaimer exposes the risk inherent in such attacks at a time when the slightest departure from Reagan’s supply-side dogma practically amounts to heresy among the conservatives likely to vote in the Iowa caucuses Monday and the New Hampshire primary on Feb. 20.

Alexander and Gramm have fought over the right to raise the Reaganite flag. Dole, more ambivalent in his subscription to supply-side economics, has also emphasized his links to Reagan, if not always to his economic policies.

Their slings at Forbes have nothing to do with Reagan, or his legacy, the rival candidates insist.

“They’re challenging [Forbes’] grasp of the average person’s daily life and problems,” political consultant Stuart Rothenberg said. “If they started to challenge the economic policy or the assumptions underlying Forbes’ accumulation of wealth, that’d be another thing.”

Whether attacks on his wealth will turn voters against Forbes is unclear. His place among the nation’s wealthiest citizens does not bother Mary Lanphere, 59, a retired flight attendant who lives in Storm Lake, a city of 8,800 in northwest Iowa.

“Compare him to Sam Walton,” Lanphere said, referring to the unassuming founder of the huge Wal-Mart department store chain. “Sam Walton was wealthier than Forbes. I think Forbes is sincere and honest.”

And other millionaires who have aspired to the presidency have not been criticized for their wealth, observers point out. Take Texas billionaire Ross Perot in 1992 and Morry Taylor this year, a little-known but colorful captain of industry campaigning here in Iowa.

“With Perot you can’t use those issues, because he’s obviously in many ways so common. Look at the way he dresses. He looks like he came off the third shift at Raytheon,” said Kevin Phillips, author of the book, “The Politics of the Rich and Poor.”

But Forbes, who has said he learned survival skills at prep school and summer camp, presents a different target, Phillips said.

“In terms of his outlook and what his magazine does and so forth, this is clearly not Populist Central,” Phillips said.

Although such class sniping has traditionally been more a tactic of the Democratic Party than the GOP, it is not altogether unprecedented during the Republican presidential primary season--just not so overt.

In 1988, Dole campaigned against the well-heeled George Bush by describing himself in Iowa as “one of us”--a man who could better understand the concerns of the down-home rural voter. (The Senate leader has resurrected the phrase in a recent television ad here.)

That time around, the strategy worked in Iowa, whose Farm Belt residents cluck their tongues at ostentatious wealth. Dole earned 37% of the vote in ’88.

All Join in War

This time around, all of the candidates, not just Dole, have joined in the war on Forbes and his money.

Initially, their attacks focused on the centerpiece of Forbes’ campaign, the flat tax, as a boon to the rich and a burden on the middle class. But as the multimillionaire transformed himself from a virtual unknown six months ago into a clear challenger, his rivals have begun taking aim at him directly.

“It’s a scorched-earth policy,” said political analyst Charles Cook. “The enormous amount of resentment at the unfairness of someone popping in this late and at this level [of support] has led them to try arguments they normally wouldn’t.”