Mr Robert Dole goes into the New York primary today on a wave of confidence after he swept the board against his Republican opponents in eight states on Tuesday. A strong performance there and in next week's Super Tuesday contests would make him a virtually unassailable candidate, which only a disaster could reverse. It is a sweet and remarkably rapid turn around in his fortunes after he was written off by the pundits and the other candidates as too old and unimaginative for the job, too much the Washington insider to carry the field before him.
These criticisms have proved unconvincing to Republican voters confronted by the choice of candidates with which they were presented. One factor above all has told with them: the need to close ranks against the right wing populist message catapulted so effectively into their party's debate and the national agenda by Mr Pat Buchanan's whirlwind campaign. This may have frightened the majority of Republican activists in these eight states to vote for Mr Dole; but in due course it must be assumed that the criticisms directed against Mr Dole will survive inexorably to attach to his campaign against President Clinton, who remains the most likely beneficiary of Republican disarray.
Mr Buchanan's opposition to corporate "downsizing" and greed, to international trade treaties and immigration that he says lacerate US workers' jobs, has had a dramatic impact on the campaigning so far. It strikes a chord with those affected by the layoff of nearly half a million workers last year and with the three fifths of US households who have seen their real incomes fall over the last 15 years. This is in addition to Mr Buchanan's appeal within the ranks of the radical and Christian fundamentalist right and to xenophobic, racist or sexist layers of the poor white class. Mr Buchanan's successful campaigning. although it peaked at some 25-30 per cent, sent a shudder through the Republican corporate establishment, which has obviously communicated itself to the majority of Republican party supporters in the eight states that voted on Tuesday.
This is not the Republicans' natural constituency. It is significant, nonetheless, that Mr Buchanan's message has so penetrated their ranks; in the longer term the Democrats would do well to pay heed to it as well, rather than assume complacently that the Buchanan factor will redound to their electoral advantage. Mr Clinton and Mr Dole agree on many more things than divide them in the limited choice that the US presidential system throws up for voters. Perhaps this is why so few of them regularly less than 50 per cent of the electorate bother to vote. Those that do in November seem likely, seen from today and barring disasters for Mr Clinton, to return the President for a second term. He would be well advised to pay as close attention to the Buchanan protest vote as Mr Dole has had to do.