ASHINGTON - The call went out to members of the Republican establishment only days before the New Hampshire primary. Their candidate was in a tight race, maybe even in trouble. They should do what they could to save him up there - and, implicitly, to save themselves.
The GOP establishment did too little, or did it too late, or too lamely, and now its members - the fat-cats of fable, the lobbyists of lore - are fretting over their foc accia. They are the objects of John McCain's scorn (and of his campaign-finance legislation). They like the way things are now. They're for changing the tax code. They're decidedly cooler about changing the code of conduct around Washington.
It isn't every day a presidential candidate runs against his own party, and it's rarer still that one does so and wins a high-profile primary. The last time it happened was 1984, when Gary Hart held up to ridicule the Democrats' longtime allies in the labor movement, portraying them as porcine bureaucrats out of touch with their membership and with political reality.
That's what the Republican establishment is faced with in the wake of this week's up-country upset. But this time the candidate of big power, Governor George W. Bush of Texas, while supple and resilient, isn't nearly as fluent or as polished as former vice president Walter F. Mondale was 16 years ago. The ties to Mondale were decades deep. The ties to Bush are months deep.
The words that are flying around the office suites and power corridors of the GOP establishment this week: Over-commitment. Over-exposure. Over-investment.
A constant struggle
The battle for the Republican nomination will be portrayed as a snarling match between ambitious rivals, one blithe, the other stubborn. It's more than that, however. It is a landmark struggle between insiders (represented, ironically, by a governor based in Austin) and outsiders (represented, with equal irony, by a senator based in Washington).
The old bulls of the GOP have reason to battle McCain, and reason to fear him. Put aside for a moment the incendiary topic about big campaign contributions, which are the very oxygen of the political establishment. Focus instead on an elemental policy question, taxes. The House wants a big tax cut. The Senate wants a more modest tax cut. McCain doesn't really want much of one at all.
In truth, the GOP establishment isn't as monolithic as it was in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when it was an alliance between corporate managers and Main Street business owners. Today there are rival Republican establishments, one silky-smooth and representing business interests and the other hard-edged and representing the ideology of Ronald Reagan.
McCain's achievement is in aliena ting both. The interests are worried about the survival of their PACs, their weapons in the battle against regulation. The ideologists are worried that McCain would push, as an ad produced by the Americans for Tax Reform describes them, ''nationalized campaign laws that muzzle conservative voices.''
Some lobbyists unhappy
There is no panic yet in Lobby City, which, according to documents released this week, accounted for $100 million in unregulated ''soft money.'' But there is disappointment, anxiety, impatience, even contempt. Prominent Capitol lobbyists aren't pleased with what they saw in New Hampshire. This is the testimony of the president of one of the most devoutly Republican trade associations, a first-rank lobbyist who has contributed personally to Bush's campaign and who has a Bush sticker on his car:
''Here is the Great Hope, beaten by 19 points, and the bad thing about it is that the guy who won is, from K Street's point of view, the worst possible candidate. But other than the fact that he is from Texas, has the right last name and has bazillions of dollars, there was no reason for anyone to vote for Bush, especially when he went up against a guy whose bones were broken in service to his country.''
So now, from the cool law suites and power centers, the advice to Bush is pouring forth: Be more focused. Dump that stultifying stump speech. Beware of being over-protected and over-programmed. Don't cede the reform message to McCain, and portray your experience in Texas on welfare, taxes, and education as a reform record.
Meanwhile, McCain's camp is portraying Bush as the new-century version of Gerald Ford and Robert J. Dole.
''When people start to realize that establishment Republicans have hardly elected a president in my lifetime, they are going to say: `Why do we have to go down the Bush path?''' said Orson Swindle, who served as assistant commerce secretary under Reagan and slept beside McCain in the Hanoi prison for 18 months. ''In the end, the people want to make the choice, not the party apparatchiks.'' The next round is two weeks away.
