ASHINGTON - Five months before a single vote is cast in a presidential caucus or primary, the Republican race has taken on the look of spring - the political season of settling and sorting that follows the crucial winter primaries.
Four candidates have dropped out, including former Vice President Dan Quayle yesterday, while George W. Bush's $55 million war chest has led some to consider his nomination inevitable.
''In lieu of caucuses and primaries, the straw polls, media appearances and financial filing reports are winnowing the field,'' the New Hampshire Republican Party chairman, Stephen Duprey, said yesterday. ''Four or five candidates are cut before we even get to a vote.''
But it's not over yet, Duprey said. The contest now enters a new phase: the ''primary within a primary'' among the candidates to survive the next few months and become the leading alternative to Bush. The race among the remaining eight Republicans will become much more intense, with advertisements, debates, and scrutiny of the issues.
So far, the race has been notable for Bush's strength and the remarkably early rush to the exit door by some GOP hopefuls. That is a result of the compressed primary schedule that could mean the nomination will be sealed within a few weeks of the vote in New Hampshire.
Unless a candidate has piled up money this year, there probably will be no time to collect the funds next year necessary to be competitive, even if someone pulls a stunning upset in Iowa or New Hampshire.
Thus, candidates who are failing to collect much money now view their campaigns as hopeless and are either dropping from the race or seeking a new political party or base for their ambitions.
Bush has benefited from being the popular choice in a crowded field of about dozen candidates. But as more candidates drop out, the shrinking field is likely to produce one or two significant alternatives to Bush. At that point, anti-Bush sentiment might coalesce around one candidate, who then might rise quickly in the national polls and become a real competitor to the Texas governor.
For example, Senator John McCain of Arizona, who formally kicked off his campaign yesterday in New Hampshire, hopes to benefit from a backlash against Bush by focusing on campaign finance.
Bush is expected to report this week that he has collected $55 million, well on his way to meeting predictions that he will have between $75 million and $100 million to spend during the primaries. To put that in perspective, candidates are prohibited from spending more than $33.5 million during the primaries on direct campaign costs if they take federal matching funds, not including expenses for fund-raising and legal bills.
Bush, by rejecting the matching funds, could have three or four times as much money as his closest competitors, with the exception of Steve Forbes. The multimillionaire publisher is using mostly his own funds and is the only candidate aside from Bush who is rejecting the federal funds and thus avoiding the spending cap.
''This Republican primary for the presidency is unprecedented,'' Quayle said yesterday in Phoenix while announcing he is dropping out of the race. ''Never before have we had a Republican primary like we have today. The front-runner apparently will have up to $100 million to spend in the primary.''
Here is where the GOP race stands. The four candidates who have dropped out are Quayle, Representative John Kasich of Ohio, former Tennessee Governor Lamar Alexander, and Senator Bob Smith of New Hampshire, who is making a longshot independent bid. A fifth candidate, Patrick J. Buchanan, is expected to leave the GOP and seek the Reform Party nomination.
That leaves as Bush's competitors McCain, Forbes, former Red Cross president and Cabinet secretary Elizabeth Dole, former Reagan aide Gary Bauer, Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, and talk-show host Alan Keyes. The latest CNN poll shows Bush with 53 percent, and each of the other candidates in the single digits. Ironically, Quayle was in second place in that poll with 9 percent, but he said he lagged too far behind in the money race to compete.
Another way to think about the presidential race, analysts said, is to throw out the perception that the campaign begins in January, picks up steam with the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, and is decided with the Southern states and Super Tuesday.
The new way to look at the contest, analysts said, is to view the first phase as the fund-raising race, which Bush clearly is winning. The next phase is the fight for the support of political activists, symbolized by last month's straw vote in Iowa, which Bush won handily. While the straw vote was criticized as meaningless, it clearly played a role in the decisions by Alexander and Quayle to drop out. Both men performed far below expectations in a state where they had invested much time and money.
In the coming phase, the remaining candidates will fight to emerge as the alternative to Bush. To do this, several competitors are hoping the race will focus on which candidate will emerge as the ''true conservative,'' with an emphasis on tax cuts, opposition to abortion and other issues.
In any case, the race is expected to be over within weeks of the New Hampshire primary, possibly by March 7 when 11 states hold their primaries, including delegate-rich California.
Dole, meanwhile, is banking on support from women and younger voters. But in the CNN poll released yesterday, Dole had dropped to 8 percent from 17 percent in March. McCain, Forbes, and Buchanan were tied with 5 percent, Keyes had 3 percent, and Bauer and Hatch had 2 percent.
All of the candidates, meanwhile, are waiting for Bush to stumble. The GOP field is beginning to harp on Bush for ducking some events, with Forbes noting over the weekend that Bush skipped a California gathering of candidates in order to attend the Ryder Cup. In the coming days, several campaigns are expected to put pressure on Bush to attend a series of New Hampshire debates and town meetings, the first of which is scheduled for later this month.
