Forbes, McCain Bash Bush on Taxes, Abortion

His Iowa caucus victory only hours old, Texas Gov. George W. Bush fell into an ideological pincer attack from his two chief challengers in New Hampshire on Tuesday, taking shots on taxes and abortion as he sought to translate his Midwestern success into an advantage among the traditionally prickly voters here.

Businessman Steve Forbes thrashed Bush from the right on taxes and Sen. John McCain of Arizona came at him from his more moderately conservative perch on abortion, both trying to knock down the national front-runner to their own benefit.

Forbes’ approach marked a shift from the final days of the Iowa campaign, when he hammered Bush on abortion--but it was a clear reflection of Forbes’ take on the more secular interests of voters here. Indeed, he and McCain appeared at times to have traded places, with McCain shifting to abortion from his usual criticism of Bush’s tax plan.

Bush, anxious to quash both challengers, touted his tax plan and said he would continue to press the case for it in tonight’s GOP debate. The Democrats, too, were scheduled to debate tonight.

Running behind McCain in pre-primary polling here, Bush insisted he was ready for the fight in New Hampshire. But he also none-too-subtly underscored his strong positioning for the remainder of the primary season, where he holds a vast organizational and financial edge.

“Up to now, Sen. McCain has had a time advantage in New Hampshire,” Bush said. “Now we’re all going to be here the same amount of days. . . . There’s no doubt about it, he’s a tough candidate to beat. We’ll see beyond New Hampshire what they choose to do.”

He dismissed Forbes’ strong showing in Iowa, where Bush won by a narrower-than-expected margin of 41% to 30%.

“I thought a strong first was better than a second,” Bush told reporters at his Merrimack hotel.

The Democratic winner of the caucuses, Vice President Al Gore, buoyantly pledged not to take his lead in New Hampshire for granted, but just for good measure criticized both his primary opponent Bill Bradley and his probable Republican opponent Bush’s “huge, risky, tax scheme-giveaway.”

Bradley, for his part, tried to shake off his lopsided Iowa loss--he was defeated by a nearly 2-1 margin--by emphasizing his credentials as a former senator from New Jersey and pledging reform, both of health care insurance and the frequently negative political system. Nonetheless, he sent surrogates out to criticize Gore, and began airing a television advertisement in which the widow of the last Democratic insurgent to win New Hampshire--the late Paul E. Tsongas--bashed Gore for misrepresenting Bradley’s record.

The surviving candidates, including the major challengers and Republican Gary Bauer, who placed a disappointing fourth in the Iowa caucuses, high-tailed to New Hampshire in the early morning hours Tuesday, exhausted but girding for a battle that began at dawn with public appearances and interviews on morning news shows.

But the traditional convergence of the political world on this tiny spit of land was overshadowed by a mammoth blizzard that dumped snow from the southern edge of the eastern seaboard up to Maine, closing a host of airports intermittently, including the Manchester and Boston airports into which the political world was flying.

One candidate, Republican Alan L. Keyes, fell victim to the weather and found himself stuck in the Detroit airport through the afternoon. The sixth Republican, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, was not in New Hampshire and Associated Press reported that he was leaving the race.

The storm had not only meteorological but, potentially, political consequences. It drew attention away from the presidential politics that dominate this state every four years, a fillip that could prove particularly troublesome to challengers who have only one week to make up ground.

Startlingly, at least to the legions of candidates and handlers, volunteers and voters, the state’s major television station began its 6 p.m. broadcast Tuesday with these words: “First, we begin tonight with what everyone’s talking about.” And then WMUR flashed film of the weather.

David Carney, a GOP veteran and former White House political director who is neutral in the race, said the storm could dissipate some of the momentum Forbes was trying to harness out of Iowa, and could also stall a Bradley resurrection.

“There’s a limit to what can happen if the other candidates can’t make news,” he said. “ ‘There’s going to be a big blizzard’ and ‘Gore and Bush won.’ That’s the news.”

Analysts on both sides suggested that tonight’s debates could prove crucial, either by freezing the field where it is--McCain and, though not unanimously, Gore on top--or granting new life to one of the underdogs.

The Republican underdogs were fighting most fiercely Tuesday. Forbes’ return to taxes as his bulwark issue was a replay of his 1996 presidential campaign, which he based almost completely on eradicating the Internal Revenue Service and replacing it with a 17% flat tax on income. It also is familiar territory to New Hampshire voters, who in 1992 watched as Republican Patrick J. Buchanan bludgeoned Bush’s father, former President George Bush, for breaking his “read my lips, no new taxes” vow.

“People are going to look at the record on taxes,” Forbes told reporters in Nashua. “George Bush: look at his record. In Texas, he broke the tax pledge.”

While Forbes was moving on Bush from the right, McCain was inching at him from the center with a nuanced discussion of abortion. Both Bush and McCain oppose abortion, except in instances of rape, incest or threat to the life of the mother.

But while Bush has said he is satisfied with the Republican platform that advocates a strict, no-exceptions ban on abortion, McCain on Tuesday said that he favored loosening the platform language. While the differences on position are negligible, McCain’s words were fighting phrases to a Republican Party that quadrennially tussles over the platform language on abortion.

“I’m for the exemption; that’s my position,” McCain said on ABC-TV’s ‘Good Morning America’ program. But he later said that he would not actively seek a platform change.

Bush, for his part, was trying not to be dragged into a dispute with his GOP colleagues. He said that he would emphasize his own tax plan in coming days. “The people of New Hampshire need to hear the facts about my budget,” he said. “They need to see my heart.”

Stirring passion was also all in the day’s work for the Democratic candidates, though Gore surely came at it with a bigger head of steam than Bradley. The vice president rallied supporters at West High School in Manchester, promising to spend every waking moment he could in the state before Tuesday’s primary.

“We’re not taking a single vote for granted,” Gore said. “I want the voters of New Hampshire to know that I understand very clearly that New Hampshire doesn’t take its cue or lead from anywhere else. You make your own decisions.”

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Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Ed Chen with Gore, Matea Gold with Bradley, Maria L. La Ganga with Bush, T. Christian Miller with McCain and O’Connor with Forbes. Barabak reported from Manchester. It was written by Times political writer Cathleen Decker in Los Angeles.