ARROLL, Iowa - Steve Forbes, the magazine publisher who prefers to characterize himself as an ''independent outsider,'' believes he is sowing a political insurgency on the rolling plains of Iowa.
As he spends his last days in the state, traveling a circuit of rural county seats where grain elevators tower over two-story office buildings, Forbes talks of defying the establishment, smashing power and routing the ''pundits and media and special interests who want you to believe this race is over.''
In an interview yesterday, Forbes included the Republican leadership in his critique of entrenched power brokers. In their effort to rally around Texas Governor George W. Bush, he said, ''the party leaders, the lobbyists, the K Street group in Washington, have all closed ranks.''
Unsparing in his assessment of the Clinton administration, Forbes also turned his fire on his own party's performance on Capitol Hill. ''The Republican Congress has been much too passive, to be blunt, since '96 when they lost the budget showdown with Clinton,'' Forbes said. ''They haven't been bold and forthright and engaged with President Clinton on issues.''
Asked about his relationship with the congressional leadership, the candidate smiled wanly. ''I meet with Trent Lott from time to time. I send him everything I do. There's no shortage of written advice or commentary.'' The Senate majority leader ''hasn't taken the advice yet,'' Forbes said.
At one point in the conversation, as his campaign bus rolled across a panorama of farmland, Forbes described his campaign as ''the real revolutionaries'' and actually talked about going to the ''barricades'' to fight for tax legislation.
''That shows you the twists and turns of life,'' the multimillionaire executive said of his use of revolutionary expressions.
Forbes is an unlikely rebel. His positions on big government, tax relief, abortion, and strong defense swim easily in the Republican mainstream. He has the manners of a small town bank president, successful in society rather than scorned by it.
Yet Forbes argued that his ''boldness'' on issues, including the flat tax, school choice and Social Security, separated him from Bush and the rest of the GOP field.
As the days before Monday's caucus dwindle, Forbes has given up creature comforts for touring the state by bus and spending nights at modest motels with plastic drinking cups and threadbare towels.
His operation is methodical, and Forbes, himself, has been as punctual as a Swiss train in rural Iowa. Republican leaders say the Forbes organization rivals the Bush campaign in its grass-roots work.
In the end, Forbes's appeal in Iowa may be greater than the 18 points he was assigned in a Des Moines Register poll earlier this month. His events this week in northern Iowa drew impressive crowds, though it was not altogether clear whether they represented Forbes faithful or were merely curious, drawn from the workaday routine of small towns for the promise of a free meal (chili or chicken noodle soup), a copy of the candidate's slick campaign book and an orange long-sleeved Forbes jersey.
The audiences seem friendly, but their enthusiasm is whetted by a claque accompanying the candidate, two women who drive by car behind the bus and instigate applause with bursts of clapping.
At Orange City, a Dutch community near the South Dakota line where the locals sound as if they've stepped off the set of ''Fargo,'' Forbes repeatedly criticized the ''bureaucrats, elites and lobbyists'' in Washington. Though his language carried some of the same catch phrases from George C. Wallace's assaults on the ''pointy-headed bureaucrats'' 30 years ago, his message was conveyed in a soft voice.
A few miles up the road at Sheldon, he characterized his two leading Republican opponents, Bush and Arizona Senator John McCain, as part and parcel of an establishment unwilling to change. Of their tax proposals, Forbes says, ''They've used an array of snippets here and tucks there, but nothing gets to the heart of the problem.''
Reaching out to the conservative Christian communities, he has emphasized his opposition to abortion. To establish his legitimacy on the subject, he was joined on the trip by Phyllis Schlafly, an exponent of take-no-prisoners conservative doctrine who goes back to the last triumph by a true ''outsider'' in the Republican Party, Barry Goldwater.
At first, Schlafly said she was not endorsing Forbes, merely reinforcing his ''pro-life'' theme. But as the crowds grew larger at each stop on the schedule, Schlafly began confiding to her listeners that she would vote for Forbes were she an Iowa resident.
Steve Grubbs, a former state Republican chairman who is backing Forbes, likes to recall the precedent of other insurgencies in Iowa: in 1980, when George Bush, father of the current candidate, surprised Ronald Reagan; in 1988, when evangelist Pat Robertson finished ahead of Bush; and four years ago, when Pat Buchanan nearly beat Bob Dole.
But Grubbs never carries his examples to their end. In each case, the hopes of these maverick candidates were ultimately extinguished by the Republican establishment later in the campaign.
Forbes said he was not discouraged by the Republican Party's history of the eldest son succeeding his father. ''When I was growing up I was the oldest among my siblings, so I saw some merit then. But not since then. Thomas Jefferson abolished primogeniture over 200 years ago,'' Forbes said. ''I think any Republicans who have a lingering fondness for it, they'll be over it by the time I get through with this campaign.''
