NEWS ANALYSIS : November Victory to Require Wider Appeal

Though Tuesday’s impressive victories moved Sen. Bob Dole a huge step toward his party’s presidential nomination, to forge a victorious coalition for November, the big winner still must find a way to match the appeal of the two most significant losers: Steve Forbes and Patrick J. Buchanan.

Two distinct groups of voters have supported publishing magnate Forbes and columnist Buchanan in this winter’s primaries. And both are essential to round out the Republican majority coalition first assembled by Ronald Reagan.

Each of these constituencies--the upwardly mobile entrepreneurs, suburbanites and professionals who have backed Forbes, and the mixture of social conservatives and anxiety-ridden hourly workers who have fueled Buchanan’s insurgency--could risk being picked off this fall, either by President Clinton or Texas billionaire Ross Perot, analysts warn.

“Dole’s challenge is to make all Americans comfortable with the fact that we are going through an economic transition and that Republicans best understand how to capture the upside of that, while at the same time showing we are sensitive to potential losers,” said Jeffrey Eisenach, director of the Progress and Freedom Foundation, a conservative think tank, and an advisor to House Speaker Newt Gingrich on issues.

Meeting that challenge will be no easy task, requiring a vast overhaul of Dole’s message, as underlined by his appearance Tuesday in New York, which will hold the next GOP contest Thursday. Once again stressing his lengthy record of public service rather than any blueprint for the nation, Dole insisted: “I really believe the American people are looking for someone with hands-on experience, used to making decisions on a daily basis.”

That sort of rhetoric has made many Republicans lose patience with Dole. “He’s hollow,” said Sean Hennity, an Atlanta talk show host, who is sometimes described as the Rush Limbaugh of Georgia. “There’s no message there. Buchanan is resonating a very strong message of ‘why you should vote for me.’ He gets people behind him. I like Forbes’ flat-tax idea that a family of four can make $36,000 and not pay a dime on taxes. That’s very appealing.

“Where is Bob Dole on these things? All he says is, ‘We need to study these things again.’ ”

For all of that, Dole indicated Tuesday that he is open to the notion of reaching beyond the Republican Party loyalists who make up the base of his support. “When I was party chairman [in 1971-72], we took the front door off the building because we wanted to demonstrate that we were the open-door party,” Dole recalled. “We want to reach out to people. That’s what America is all about.”

If, as now seems certain, he becomes the GOP standard-bearer, Dole is going to have to reach out harder than ever in his career to capture the hard-core Forbes and Buchanan voters. While their numbers may not seem huge, particularly judging from Tuesday’s voting, there are enough of them to make a decisive difference in what both sides expect to be a close general election.

The Forbes and Buchanan constituencies are sharply different, and many analysts think reaching the Buchanan voters will be Dole’s hardest task.

Forbes’ status as someone removed from the Washington political establishment, along with his flat-tax proposal and its promise of economic growth, have been the big attractions to Republicans.

Though Dole can’t undo his more than three decades of Washington experience, the flat tax could be less of a problem.

Dole endorsed the idea in theory in the first major economic speech of his candidacy, and while he has steadily backed away from the reality of a flat tax ever since, he can at least continue to pay rhetorical homage to what he likes to call the “single-rate concept.”

That sort of vague support may not please the most ardent backers of the flat tax, but still “Dole is going to find it easier to sign on to a proposal that looks something like Forbes’ flat tax and is growth oriented, than it will be to endorse Buchanan’s brand of economic populism,” says University of Texas political scientist Walter Dean Burnham. The economic tenets promoted by Forbes, Burnham pointed out, are not very different from the supply-side theories that became the underpinning of Reaganomics and almost a catechism for the Republican Party.

But the Buchanan argument, with its populist call for protectionism on trade and government intervention in the economy, is a long way from standard Republican dogma. “If he tries to run as a born-again populist I question whether he is going to get very far,” Burnham said.

Indeed, right now Dole is putting some distance between himself and Buchanan’s themes. “Can you build a wall around America?” he asked in his speech here Tuesday. “I don’t think so. The best way to handle this [unfair trade practices] is for the president of the United States to use the tools that Congress has provided. I believe in open markets. I don’t believe in protectionism.”

As the outlines of Dole’s victory in Tuesday’s multi-state contests emerged, the defeated Buchanan made plain that he is not going to make it easy for Dole to reconcile the Kansas senator’s views with the Buchanan credo.

“We are going all the way to San Diego to do battle for our beliefs and convictions, and we are going to try to make the Republican Party reflect in its platform and in both its nominees the ideas and issues in our campaign in which we believe so deeply,” a visibly discouraged Buchanan told reporters in a press conference at a hotel in downtown Buffalo.

Nevertheless, some Republicans believe that Dole can find a way to align his centrist philosophy both with Forbes’ emphasis on economic growth and libertarianism and Buchanan’s stress on remedying economic insecurities.

“What Dole needs to do is to present what the Republican message has been since Ronald Reagan became president,” contended Eisenach.

While the interests of Forbes and Buchanan supporters are different, they are not contradictory, claimed Eisenach. For example, he said, Dole could devise “a very innovative worker retraining proposal,” which would appeal both to the Buchananites, worried about job security, and the Forbes partisans, eager for economic growth.

Times staff writer Elizabeth Shogren and Times researcher Edith Stanley contributed to this story.