MANCHESTER, N.H. -- With the first primary still a year away, the Republican presidential contest has gotten off to a surprisingly intense start, strongly influenced by last fall's GOP landslide.
A half-dozen Republican hopefuls campaigned in earnest during the weekend in New Hampshire.
As they made their way through national Sunday news shows, a New Hampshire television forum and a state Republican dinner, the vote that swept their party to power in Congress seemed very much on their minds.
"It was an earthquake," said Sen. Bob Dole, who called it "the clincher" in his decision to run again for president.
Already, the aftershocks of the power shift in Washington are shaping the next presidential campaign in ways large and small. Candidacies and strategies have been reconsidered. Controversial new proposals, such as ending affirmative action, are being pushed.
Mr. Dole is the best-known of the Republican campaigners. At 71, the Kansas senator is making his third try for the nomination. If elected, he would be the oldest man ever to assume the presidency. He claims to be a different kind of candidate this time: "warm, cuddly, fuzzy . . . more relaxed."
But a more significant transformation may have been the one that occurred last month, when he took over as majority leader of the Senate.
In that job, Mr. Dole is working to advance his party's reform agenda and helping redefine himself as part of the GOP change. That's a far better image than the one he used to have: as a 36-year veteran of Washington's inside game and a Capitol Hill deal-maker once derided by Newt Gingrich as "the tax collector for the welfare state."
During three days of politicking around New Hampshire, Mr. Dole is telling everyone who'll listen that his 1996 campaign will echo dTC the '94 Republican message: "Rein in the federal government and return power to the states and, ultimately, back to the people."
While his party's takeover in Congress may be giving Mr. Dole's chances a boost, it could have the opposite effect on another hopeful, former Gov. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee.
The former education secretary, who will formally announce his candidacy later this month, has been trying for months to tap into the public's anger with Washington by calling for Congress to cut its pay in half and go home for six months out of the year.
"Even with the Republican Congress," adds Mr. Alexander, who is sticking to his approach. But his idea may not be such a sure-fire applause-getter any more; it drew a half-hearted response recently when he tried it on a gathering of conservative activists from around the country.
"Alexander's message has been seriously eclipsed," said Paul Wilson, a Republican consultant. "He's selling a new, horse-drawn wagon when we've gotten to the car."
Like all the candidates, Mr. Alexander is facing a political environment that changed radically in November.
Until then, the '96 race figured to be "about who could inherit or claim a sizable share of the Perot vote," said Thomas Rath, a former New Hampshire attorney general and key Alexander strategist. Now, "the question is: How do we present ourselves as the logical extension of the 1994 election?"
Indeed, the first fight of '96 has broken out over the question of just who is the true conservative revolutionary in the race. Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas is determined to claim the title, declaring that he is "more committed to dramatically changing American government than Bob Dole is."
But catering to the public's taste for change may not be as simple as that. For example, some elements of the blueprint for Republican reform, the "Contract with America," seem contradictory, such as its provisions for deep cuts in taxes and eliminating the federal budget deficit.
"What was the message?" Mr. Dole asked rhetorically at a campaign stop in Keene, N.H. "I'm not certain. Different people have different messages."
That's what Mr. Gramm learned when a conservative voter rebuked him for wanting to "bribe" the electorate with a big tax cut.
"That's not what we were voting for last year," said Elaine Hoiska, a Greenville, N.H., accountant. "I want somebody to say that deficit reduction is the most important thing."
In 1996, the Republicans also face a heated, and potentially divisive debate over abortion, which flared up at the state GOP dinner last night in Manchester, N.H., where 1,400 Republicans paid $100 apiece.
While the leading contenders avoided the issue in the eight minutes each was allotted, several fringe candidates drew sharply opposing stances on the issue -- and considerable emotion from opposing elements of the audience.
Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, trying to position himself as the only abortion-rights candidate, urged the party to remove its anti-abortion plank or risk losing the '96 election.
But TV commentator Patrick J. Buchanan, who finished second in the 1992 primary here, maintained, to equally loud applause, that the party "is going to be right-to-life and the Republican ticket is going to be right-to-life."
Mr. Gramm, who is to become the first candidate to formally enter the race later this week, is driving the early action on the Republican side. The new, compressed primary calendar has produced a de facto national primary in 1996 -- two-thirds of the delegates will be chosen during a six-week period next February and March.
And Mr. Gramm's fund-raising operation, with its goal of collecting $20 million over the next year, is credited with helping push former Vice President Dan Quayle, former Housing Secretary Jack F. Kemp and former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney out of the competition.
But some Republican analysts question whether the Texas senator, who like Mr. Dole has spent most of his career in Congress, can campaign successfully as a reformer.
"It's sort of a weak field," concluded John P. Sears, a veteran Republican strategist. "It's especially so, given the fact that what everybody is interested in is change."
Ed Goeas, a pollster who had been advising Mr. Kemp, agrees that, "There's no one kind of leading this parade or revolution that is going on here in Washington."
He adds that "Gramm really comes closest," but, like many others, he expects another, stronger candidate to fill the vacuum. Gov. Pete Wilson of California, perhaps the only one who could enter late this year and raise enough money to compete effectively, is the one most frequently mentioned.
At this early stage, at least, Mr. Dole is the favorite, with everyone else far behind. Polls released yesterday by two Boston newspapers showed him leading the pack in New Hampshire by 25 percentage points.
Mr. Gramm countered with an endorsement yesterday by the state's senior senator, Robert C. Smith.
Mr. Dole says a victory in the primary here next Feb. 20 could all but guarantee him the nomination. He and his advisers were encouraged by his initial signs of strength in the state, including enthusiastic crowds that greeted him this weekend.
"But I was ahead of Vice President Bush in the polls up here in 1988," Mr. Dole was quick to recall. "And I lost by 10 points."