TH UAYLE R0 LE 3 Dedicated to all characters assassinated while serving their country Scenario One. Jim Baker grants an exclusive interview to CBS and Dan Rather to discuss f?The Quayle Problem.? It is Baker?s forlorn that although he and the . president love Dan very much they must concentrate on steering the ship of state. Translation: ?We?re going to throw the vice-presidential selection to the convention ?oor where 'we have made certain that Dan will be disemboweled and eaten alive by our wolves there.? Scenario Two: Dan Quayle grants an exclusive interview to the Indiana Policy Review in which he announces his resignation as vice-president. Reason: have accomplished all that can be accomplished in a moderate~to~left administration. Now my home state needs me. Its once~ great Republican Party must be returned to conservative moorings.? Scenario Three Presidential advisor Robert Teter concedes that exit polling suggests the - ticket?s narrow re?election margin was due to Vice-President Quayle?s unprecedented decision to run a campaign independent of the president. ?Issues and nitegrity seemed to matter more with voters than media image,? Teter said. ?Who could have guessed it?? by MIKE FENCE Indianapolis Only 22) Hoosier friends of Vice~President Dan Quayle expected something like one of the three above scenarios to begin to unfold injuly. The president?s desperate campaign team, apparently without map or compass, was trying to find its way out of these strange woods that are the 1992 Republican National Convention. There can be no doubt that members of Congress and certain delegates were meeting to discuss a once unthinkable option made thinkable by comments from James ?Quayle-was~ not-my?choice? Baker. He and others hinted of a supposed GOP consensus that: 1) Quayle could be dumped without serious damage to the president; and 2) he could be r?eplaced by a new model babyboomer less offensive to the Washington Post and News.? Michael RPence is president ofihefoa na?aiion. PAGE ?Dan Quayle holds the minds anal hearts of the conservative, church-going voters who have created the contemporary Republican Party. ?Mihe Pence ?Quayle ts yoathfal and was bound to make all the natural mls~ tahes, some of which Bash ?5 people didn?t help him avoid. ?Doag Kmi?ec QUAYLE CHRONICLES Rubbish. Whether it was Bush?s cynical reversal of the ?no new taxes? pledge or his vacillation on the 1992 Civil Rights (quota) Act, he has managed to alienate a sizable portion of the presidential campaign. Somehow, miraculously, Dan Quayle has kept his distance from those objectionable acts and has, more than any other politician in America, engendered real credibility as a spokesman forthe strong?defense, free-market and tradition?driven platfonn of that coalition. This is the platform, please remember, that conquered the political debate first in 1980, again in 1984 and more recently, even if by echo, in 1988. Whether the president?s men think the thought laughable or not, the vice-president is the only real asset of the Bush campaign. He is the sole member of the Republican hierarchy with a true base in the electorate. Dan Quayle holds the minds and hearts of the conserva- tive, church-going voters who have created the contemporary Republican Party. George Bush does not. The struggles within the GOP, therefore, will have less to do with winning the 1992 election than they will with finally resolving a long?running war between the two wings of the Party: a) The Rockefeller Republicans, the county~club and establishment wing whose policies and principles are purchased to complement direct?mail campaigns; and b) the Goldwater Republicans, the wing of committed economic and social conservatives whose intellectual energy has powered the party for the past two decades. So which of the three scenarios you find yourself watching during the GOP Conven- tion will tell you all you need to know not only about the outcome of the November election but about the future of the Repub- licans. Our prediction? If Bush cans Quayle, conservatives will make sure that Bush is dumped as well. They will have projected that four years of ?James Earl" Clinton followed by eight years of Jack Kemp is a better deal than four more years of Bush?Baker followed by eight years of Mario Cuomo. ?19? the international economics ofsoct'al? ism has been discredited, why has not the traditional economics ofcapttaltsm been vindicated?? _Irutng Kn?stol, 1978 CAN WE BUSH BE Dan Quayle may weiijoin Ted Kennedy in wondering ?where was George?? by DOUG me South Bend (lane 1)?As a formerReagan o?t?cz?al that was mtlahie? tf inexplicably?a attracted to Ross Perot, [have been pondering how George Bush has so thoroughly squan- dered the legacy of economic and social achievement he inherited in 1988. In my musings, I recently ran across observations which Ipenneal in mid-December 1989for a historian who was exploring the relationship between presidents and their vice-presidents. Bach then, Bush ?5 popularity ran high, and my lamentoverBash ?s oactllattons were lamely met with blank stares or disbelief Neverthe? less, I wrote.- The ReaganeBush relationship was cor? dial, though not warm. Since Reagan is by nature friendly and inclusive, it could hardly be otherwise. But remember where things started. Bush was a vitriolic opponent of Reagan in the 1980 primary, and whether the big-hearted president forgave and forgot, his loyal staff did not. Nevertheless, from the beginning, 'the Reagan administration was staffed at least from the Reagan campaign organization perspective with ?infidels.? And clever Bush infidels theywere.Jim Baker was Bush?s man in the White House. Having served as Bush?s campaign manager in 1980, Baker ultimately pushed Ed Meese aside (and out to Justice), thereafter exercising even more control over the Reagan personnel apparatus. Indeed, with few exceptions, like Justice and Education, the Bush people me- thodically placed their cohorts throughout government. In part, the lines between Bush and Reagan re?ect the divisional lines of the GOP. Bush is a native republican, Reagan (and many of his supporters) were naturalized Republicans those disaffected by Jimmy Carter, moti- vated by strong conservative or moral prin? ciple, and by?and?large, more diverse (reli- giously, ethnically and by prior political ex- periende). There is no love lost between the two wings of the Republican Party (an echo of the Rockefeller?Goldwater split, perhaps). The Bush people reflect old money, Ivy PAGE