BATTLING THE PARTY CRASHERS

By NANCY GIBBS AND MICHAEL DUFFY

IT MUST HAVE BEEN A creepy feeling for the high-flying Steve Forbes, as he scorched across the primary terrain, handling his political machinery so deftly that he looked as if he'd been doing this all his life, to find himself in radar lock from Stealth fighters launched by his own party to bring him down. This time it wasn't just the attack ads on TV or the sight of "neutral" Newt Gingrich describing a central element of the Forbes flat-tax plan as "nonsense." Forbes saw something more sinister at work, which made him mad enough to improvise in mid-script. "The dinosaurs," he told TIME, "are closing ranks." The other campaigns, he charged last Friday, "are making anonymous calls and sending anonymous mailings distorting my record on abortion, gays in the military and Social Security." While he wouldn't name names, his campaign manager Bill Dal Col described an unholy alliance of Bob Dole, Pat Buchanan and the Christian Coalition, something that the Dole and Buchanan camps deny. "A lot of attacks are going to come my way for the simple reason that my proposals strike at the heart of the culture of Washington," Forbes declared.

His indignation did not move his tormentors. "He's clearly had a meltdown out there," said a top Dole road warrior, Nelson Warfield, the candidate's press secretary. "I mean, he spent millions on negative ads, and now he's upset that there are phone banks working against him?" Actually, it's important in war to know your enemies, and in this case Forbes may have missed the point. Every politician with a pulse lashes out at "the culture of Washington." Forbes was under fire last week because his insurgent campaign was slicing apart the G.O.P., and the party elders, activists and loyalists--inside and outside the capital--decided he had to be stopped.

Republican presidential primaries are normally royalist affairs, staid rituals of continuity posing briefly as wild free-for-alls. While Democrats can often be counted on to stage long catfights that rip apart the party so deeply that reassembly by November is impossible, Republicans prefer one-act passion plays in primogeniture. From watching Democrats, the G.O.P. has learned the cost of indulging in party soul searching for more than a few weeks.

But then out of the wilderness comes Forbes, messing with tradition. It was bad enough that the party, as it was winning converts to the balanced-budget faith, saw the crusade stall in Congress. Now here is Forbes preaching a supply-side gospel of tax cuts and growth, telling his growing crowds not to worry about the red ink--it will just trickle away. Every time he opens his mouth, he draws attention to one of the most sensitive, if open, secrets of a party in which everyone claims the mantle of Ronald Reagan. Party elders understand, even if some voters have yet to, that there is a basic contradiction between Reagan's supply-side economics and the balanced-budget crusade that has been both the hallmark of Dole's political career and his party's rallying cry since it took over Congress.

Having split the voters who hate deficits from the voters who hate taxes even more, Forbes has gone on to break a very fragile peace: the one between the party's moderates and its social conservatives. Last week, after Buchanan shocked the party and punctured Phil Gramm's campaign by beating him in Louisiana, the whole race looked like it was opening up--and the G.O.P. coalition like it was falling apart. Attracted to his relaxed views on abortion and homosexuality, social libertarians went for Forbes; values conservatives for Buchanan; supply siders for Forbes; deficit hawks for Dole; anxious economic nationalists for Buchanan, who invited angry Democrats in union halls to "join the party of greed" long enough to help him hijack the nomination. Even Lamar Alexander could claim to be a credible contender--the new safe choice--by being less mean than Dole and Forbes, less Beltway than Dole and Gramm and less disruptive to the party than Forbes and Buchanan. When Republican leaders talk of devolution, this is hardly what they had in mind. "This is beginning to look like a classic Democratic race," quipped G.O.P. strategist Bill Kristol. "This isn't going to help our image."

And so last week the Empire struck back. On Friday 300 Ohio Republicans and more than 500 Illinois Republicans climbed on buses for an overnight ride into Iowa, where they would bang on doors and get out the vote for Dole. Anti--flat tax forces in the real estate and construction industries planned to spend $250,000 in Iowa and New Hampshire to try to save the mortgage-interest deduction, which Forbes' plan would drop. Their Coalition to Preserve Home Ownership began mailing flyers to every homeowner who voted in the last New Hampshire primary. The mailing does not mention Forbes by name, but it does declare that any attempt to eliminate the mortgage-interest deduction would be, like a tornado or termites, a "famous American home wrecker."

Meanwhile, in New Hampshire, a nonpartisan, nonprofit group called the United States National Taxpayers Alliance spent $80,000 on ads attacking the Forbes flat-tax plan. Charles Givens, the get-rich-quick author, is spending half a million dollars of his own fast cash to buy TV time in New Hampshire, and possibly later in Arizona and the Dakotas, for ads that characterize the flat tax as HIGHER TAXES FOR YOU; MORE MONEY FOR FORBES, with the sound of a cash register ringing in the background. Givens has his principles, but he also bears a grudge. Forbes magazine over the years has regularly denounced Givens' "idiotic promises" and called his tax-cutting tips "perfectly legal but perfectly absurd."

The most organized and relentless counterstrike may come from the Christian Coalition, which despises Forbes more than any candidate short of Clinton. Forbes fueled the feud last week when he accused them of conspiracy in the phone campaign and declared that "the Christian Coalition does not speak for most Christians." The group was mailing 500,000 "voter guides" to New Hampshire and Iowa, pointing out that Forbes is opposed to a constitutional amendment that would ban abortion and that he gave no response on the question of whether to fund Planned Parenthood. If Forbes does particularly well in the early races, a senior Christian Coalition official told TIME, the group is considering an even more pointed voter guide. It would list Forbes and Dole alone and make clear, among other things, that Forbes supported an effort in New York to recruit and give money to pro-choice moderate Republicans and once called Pat Robertson a "toothy flake" in his magazine column.

Though lots of political pros were surprised by the sudden drama of the race, there had been signs for a long time that this denouement was coming. As it has tried to be the party of unfettered free enterprise, the G.O.P. in recent years has found itself grappling with what sociologist Daniel Bell calls the cultural contradictions of capitalism. Capitalism, he argues, is a tornado; no tradition is safe in its path. It splinters the nuclear family into two earners, squashes small towns by dropping Wal-Marts on them and shreds God's country into real estate. It promotes a consumer culture that offers the mall and the media as rivals to Mom and Dad, church and community. Its guiding principle--individual fulfillment--just happens to be the banner of hedonism too. From the imaginative freedom and unbridled initiative of capitalism you get the personal computer industry. And also alt.sex.fetish.

Could one party bridge those contradictions? Not when Republicans were adding some more of their own. The leaders of a party that built its muscle by denouncing government and proposing to dismantle it can't easily attack a candidate like Forbes, who really wants to do what they've promised. He has called the bluff of all the lifelong politicians who pay lip service to term limits, who revile the city they live in and disdain the profession they've pursued. Rather than welcoming Forbes as a surprisingly skillful, deep-pocketed campaigner who would draw new voters, restless Democrats and frustrated Perotistas into the Republican fold, the party establishment views him as a skunk who has wandered into their mythic Big Tent, and they don't quite know what to do with him.

The deep social divisions in the party have long posed a problem for a pragmatist like Dole. The risk of a rival from the right was always taken seriously by his campaign, and the results from Louisiana last week showed why. Only Gramm and Buchanan entered the race there, to determine early on who was the more appealing standard bearer for the party's right flank. The surprising tally suggested that anxious workers who don't share Buchanan's social convictions will swallow them because they like his strong-armed economic nationalism; in the races ahead, the question will be whether conservative Christians will swallow the economics in order to get the social commitment.

The surprise for Dole, it turns out, comes from the opposite direction. Forbes is in some ways a harder enemy to tackle, and not just because his wealth gives him running room. By targeting the messenger, Dole is threatening to sink the message, which is getting him into trouble with others who share Forbes' supply-side devotion. Jack Kemp, aware of how Dole lusts for his endorsement, weighed in with aid and comfort to Forbes. "In the great tradition of President Reagan, especially during his birthday week, I strongly urge all Republicans seeking the presidential nomination to speak no ill of thy fellow Republican's efforts to reform the tax code," he said last week.

Even as Dole denounced the Forbes tax plan as "snake oil" and Gingrich branded part of it "nonsense," the two Washingtonians found themselves rebuked by none other than House majority leader Dick Armey, a longtime flat-tax champion. "In politics, panicky candidates sometimes say things they never live down," Armey warned. "In 1980 George Bush mischaracterized Reagan's policies as 'voodoo economics,' and it haunted him for the rest of his career," Armey argued. "The flat tax is the future of the Republican Party." As Armey and Dole hashed out the details of the congressional schedule in the Senate cloakroom recently, Dole sought to mollify the House majority leader, saying he was referring only to the version of the flat tax that Forbes has been touting. "That's my flat tax," Armey growled. And just in case that was not enough to get his point across, Armey made a special trip to New Hampshire last Thursday to spread the flat-tax gospel in a daylong blitz.

With the Big Tent collapsing on their heads--and in the week of Ronald Reagan's 85th birthday, no less--Gingrich and party chairman Haley Barbour were struggling to come up with a story that could paper over this growing gulf and restore a broad theme to their election-year drive. Their best effort: an argument that what their party stands for is major tax reform. Both went out of their way to emphasize that the flat tax is only one of several proposals for overhauling the hated federal tax system.

Their approach recognizes the danger in attacking Forbes too virulently. The core of his support comes not so much from flat taxers and supply siders but rather from a growing army of weakly aligned Republicans and independents who dislike politics and the political parties and see in Forbes the fresh, unrehearsed and unretouched reincarnation of Ross Perot. No one in the Republican Party wants another multimillionaire to break off from the G.O.P. and run a third-party campaign at the angry middle in the fall. That would guarantee Bill Clinton another four years.

And there was another, even darker scenario brewing. "Ross Perot is just waiting to say 'They crushed Steve Forbes, so I guess I have to run as an independent,'" said Kristol. "Forbes may turn out to be the warm-up for Perot, and that is bad news for Republicans." So Forbes has to be handled with care. But so does Buchanan; no one wants a revolt on the right--and a third-party bid on that flank--either.

Even if Dole survives New Hampshire, he's not out of the woods yet. The worst news of the week for Dole came from New York, where the primary is set for March 7. Forbes, after spending nearly $2 million on the effort, won ballot access in 27 of New York State's 31 congressional districts. The move in a single stroke destroyed Dole's "fire wall" in the Empire State and guaranteed that Dole would face a risky and expensive race for the state's 102 delegates. A similar tremor was moving through California G.O.P. circles, where operatives are aware that the Forbes message resonates among socially liberal, economically conservative Republicans. The Dole campaign knows this: two weeks ago, campaign manager Scott Reed ceded to Governor Pete Wilson--Dole's former opponent in the race--greater influence over the Dole campaign in the state. The Governor will get to handpick the state's delegate slate to the convention in San Diego, something that would potentially permit Wilson to control an enormous bloc of votes should no candidate--or someone such as Forbes--turn up at the convention with a majority of delegates.

Dole might take some comfort from the fact that this whole fight is making his party uncomfortable. The more threatening Forbes seems, particularly to devout pro-lifers, the more likely they will be to choose a pragmatist like Dole over a purist like Buchanan. Likewise, the more ground Buchanan gains with his anti-NAFTA, anti-Big Business salvos, the more willing traditional G.O.P. allies will be to send Dole their cash and their votes. And because he is being besieged from right and left, Dole may no longer have to blow away the competition to triumph in the devilish expectations game. Now, the party elders hope, all he needs to do to come out ahead is to come out ahead.

--Reported by Jeffrey H. Birnbaum and Karen Tumulty/Washington

With reporting by JEFFREY H. BIRNBAUM AND KAREN TUMULTY/WASHINGTON