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Republicans stump in South, Midwest

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) cast the fight for the Republican presidential nomination yesterday as a battle between "the mainstream and the extreme," as GOP officials across the country began to gauge the impact of Pat Buchanan's successful populist conservative crusade on the party's emerging coalition.

Buchanan carried his campaign into the South and the Midwest yesterday, including a stop at Mount Rushmore. Still riding the wave of euphoria from his breakthrough victory in New Hampshire on Tuesday, he called on Dole and the political establishment in Washington to "stop the panicky name-calling, behave like adults" and "debate issues."

"This campaign is about handing down to the next generation ... the kind of great and good and wonderful country my parents gave to me," he said.

Dole, who left New Hampshire for the Dakotas, conceded to reporters he needs to sharpen his performance as a candidate, but quickly took aim at Buchanan as an intolerant isolationist who would divide the country and damage the Republican Party.

"This is a race between the mainstream and the extreme," he said. "It's a race between hope ... and fear. It's about freedom and it's about intolerance. It's about maintaining the Republican Congress. This is deadly serious business."

Former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander, heartened by another strong, third-place finish, sought to keep alive his claim that he is better suited than Dole to blunt Buchanan's campaign surge as he campaigned in South Carolina. He railed repeatedly against "Buchananism," which he defined as a dangerous amalgam of left-wing policies wrapped in the language of conservatism.

"It is not a conservative set of policies," Alexander said. "It ought not to be the Republicans' set of policies."

Buchanan's victory Tuesday jarred Republican officials, even those who long have regarded Dole as a fragile frontrunner for the nomination. But few displayed publicly the panic that Buchanan had predicted would take hold among the party establishment by his emergence in the GOP contest.

Instead, most said they did not believe -- or could not bring themselves to believe -- that Buchanan would emerge from the coming battle as the Republican nominee. They argued that, while Buchanan could roll up his share of delegates in upcoming primaries, he could not win a head-to-head battle with either Dole or Alexander.

But Bradley Keena, a spokesperson for the conservative Free Congress Foundation, predicted the Republicans faced a long-term struggle pitting the GOP establishment against anti-Washington, anti-establishment forces and said Buchanan's campaign represents only the first wave of that battle.

"If Republicans nominate Dole and an establishment vice president, I think they will end up alienating a whole group of voters," Keena said, adding, "If they gang up on Buchanan and end up alienating the vast support behind his issues, then that is a combination that spells doom for Republicans in November."

Kenneth Duberstein, a Republican lobbyist and voice for the party establishment, said the consensus is that Dole will win the nomination but that it will require tough slogging ahead.

Jack Kemp, who long has clashed with Buchanan's form of conservatism, acknowledged that Buchanan's tough talk about trade and wage stagnation speaks to "legitimate concerns" of many voters, but called his solutions too pessimistic, too negative and too exclusionary.

"I do not think the party of Reagan is going to turn so pessimistic," Kemp said.