Absent Candidates Take Heat at Debate

COLUMBIA, S.C. —  The two leading candidates who stayed away provoked the sharpest words from the six contenders who turned out here Saturday for the first Republican presidential debate of 1996.

As expected, several of the candidates accused the most prominent no-show, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas, of capitulating to President Clinton in the deal that will allow the federal government to reopen.

But in a sign of his increased standing in the polls, magazine publisher Steve Forbes--who pulled out of the debate when Dole withdrew--also came under fire. Both former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander and conservative commentator Patrick J. Buchanan took sharp aim at the centerpiece of Forbes’ campaign: a flat-tax proposal that would tax all earned income at 17% and eliminate virtually all deductions.

“For all of you who have seen the ads about the flat tax, read the fine print,” said Alexander, who turned in an uncharacteristically assertive performance Saturday.

The six candidates who conducted the brisk and even-tempered debate before some 2,000 local Republican activists mostly restated positions they have emphasized on the campaign trail. But several declared with new insistence that if elected they would move rapidly to remove any remaining U.S. troops from Bosnia-Herzegovina.

“If by Jan. 20 of 1997 they are still there,” said Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas, “when my hand comes off the Bible, I am going to start an orderly process to bring them home.”

Alexander and Buchanan and long-shot contender Alan Keyes also said they would move quickly to remove any remaining U.S. troops. Only Indiana Sen. Richard G. Lugar said the United States could not move precipitously to withdraw. “Under no circumstances do we pull out until we make sure our mission is completed,” Lugar said.

*

Lugar’s remarks drew scattered hisses from the audience; a few moments later he was sprayed by a barrage of catcalls when he defended the ban on semiautomatic assault weapons that Congress approved in 1994.

Dole said he could not attend the debate because of campaign commitments in Iowa and a scheduled budget meeting between GOP congressional leaders and President Clinton. Earlier, however, one of his most prominent local supporters, former Gov. Carroll A. Campbell Jr., acknowledged the front-runner did not want to give his rivals a forum to attack him. Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) also did not attend.

With a privileged spot on the calendar just before the constellation of Southern contests that dominate the election calendar in early March, South Carolina’s March 2 primary has become a major battleground in the Republican race. Recent polls show Dole holding a better than 2-to-1 advantage here over his nearest rivals, Gramm and Forbes, with Buchanan and Alexander trailing in single digits.

Reflecting those numbers, Dole came under steady fire from his rivals here last night, though the intensity of the attacks wasn’t quite as sharp as some expected.

“Bob Dole says it doesn’t matter that he’s not here tonight,” said Gramm. “But it does matter that he’s in Washington cutting a deal with Bill Clinton.”

Keyes--who drew strong applause for his impassioned attacks on abortion and his denunciation of family breakdown--likewise declared: “This president has been revived by a Republican leadership that doesn’t have the guts to stand up for what we believe in.” More surprising were the pointed jabs at Forbes, whose lavish spending on television advertising and relentless advocacy of the flat tax has moved him into the thick of the battle in the key early states.

Buchanan lashed at provisions in the flat-tax proposal that would exempt from taxation all income earned from interest or capital gains.

“You can’t have trust-fund babies down in Palm Beach clipping coupons and paying zero tax . . . while working families pay 17%,” Buchanan said. “We need a flat tax that is fair to the working people of America.”