Gop Rivals Play Tense Game Of Attacks, Appeasement

Bob Dole’s campaign juggernaut and Patrick J. Buchanan’s sputtering crusade have entered the dangerous season, the thrust-and-parry of public feinting and back-channel gamesmanship that will either cement or dissolve their fragile political relationship.

With all their major rivals gone from the Republican presidential race, Dole and Buchanan are circling each other like locked scorpions in a familiar awkward minuet that has wedded and scarred presidential primary combatants in both parties for almost two decades.

In 1980, collapsed negotiations between then-President Carter and Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy led to a contentious convention. The Rev. Jesse Jackson’s on-again, off-again talks with Walter Mondale in 1984 and Michael Dukakis in 1988 proved nettlesome to the two nominees. And four years ago, aides to then-President Bush ultimately regretted the prime-time convention speech they granted Buchanan as a price for his thorny reconciliation with the incumbent.

This year, the stakes for Dole are clear - as he locks up the nomination, the Senate majority leader needs to bring Buchanan and his hard-right followers in line before the GOP’s August convention in San Diego.

But Buchanan continues to play hard to get even as his losses mount. Indeed, he and his aides have cranked up the volume of their demands in recent days, pressing Dole with threats of bolting to a third party.

In internal meetings, Buchanan’s staff have laid plans to poll their 150,000 contributors in April on whether he should run as an independent this fall. And campaign manager Angela “Bay” Buchanan said her brother and his senior aides have discussed holding a rival San Diego conclave if Dole spurns the conservative commentator, barring him from a prominent role at the GOP convention there.

“We could have our own convention down the street from theirs. We’ve spoken about it and it’s an option,” Bay Buchanan said. She added, with a laugh, that media coverage would be “amazing.”

As the war of nerves ratchets up in public, there has been little movement behind the scenes. According to both camps, a few paltry attempts at sending out peace feelers have quickly sputtered.

“There’s nothing out there,” said a senior GOP leader. “They both know exactly what they have to do to unify the party, and no one wants to take the first step.”

Buchanan has taken a cue from Jackson’s public negotiating tactics of the ‘84 and ‘88 Democratic primary campaigns, demanding “respect” for his populist movement by claiming that not only he, but his campaign themes, require attention from Dole.

At the very least, Bay Buchanan said last week, her brother expects another “prime time slot” for a speech similar to his call to arms for a “cultural war” at the 1992 convention in Houston. In his stump speeches this winter, Buchanan has repeatedly referred to the speech nostalgically, deriding Democratic opponents and media commentators who claimed it was a contributing factor in the Bush campaign’s disintegration.

Unlike ‘92, when the Buchanan forces made only a fleeting effort to change the party’s platform, Buchanan now wants influence on the party’s direction and inclusion for his socially conservative and protectionist trade views.

For Dole, the question is whether he even needs to coddle Buchanan - as Bush did in 1992 - to win over his people.

Republican campaign veteran Robert Teeter, who has worked for Dole and managed Bush’s re-election effort in 1992, said that in a two-way race, most of Buchanan’s backers would automatically drift to Dole - negating the need for the Kansas senator to “go overboard” in wooing Buchanan into his fold.

Buchanan backers are “basically Republican and conservative, and Dole has already had success in cutting into (Buchanan’s) base,” Teeter said.

Still, it is a fine line Dole must walk; too tough a stance with Buchanan could cause problems in San Diego.

“A convention in chaos tells voters that a candidate is not in charge,” said Ronald Walters, a Howard University political scientist and former Jackson aide. “It makes them wonder if he can be a strong president. You can always throw a few bones to the loser in the privacy of negotiations and gloss over it the next day. You can’t gloss over a disaster of a convention.”

Several Bush campaign veterans who negotiated face-to-face talks with Buchanan in 1992 now say they were too quick to give in to him. Dole should be less accommodating, they say.

“If you’re in a position of strength with Pat Buchanan, use it,” said Teeter. “It’s not worth it to make a deal with him.”