CAMPAIGN '96: BATTLING THE PARTY CRASHERS

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IT MUST HAVE BEEN A creepy feeling for the high-flying Steve Forbes, as he scorched across the primary terrain, handling his political machinery so deftly that he looked as if he'd been doing this all his life, to find himself in radar lock from Stealth fighters launched by his own party to bring him down. This time it wasn't just the attack ads on TV or the sight of "neutral" Newt Gingrich describing a central element of the Forbes flat-tax plan as "nonsense." Forbes saw something more sinister at work, which made him mad enough to improvise in mid-script. "The dinosaurs," he told TIME, "are closing ranks." The other campaigns, he charged last Friday, "are making anonymous calls and sending anonymous mailings distorting my record on abortion, gays in the military and Social Security." While he wouldn't name names, his campaign manager Bill Dal Col described an unholy alliance of Bob Dole, Pat Buchanan and the Christian Coalition, something that the Dole and Buchanan camps deny. "A lot of attacks are going to come my way for the simple reason that my proposals strike at the heart of the culture of Washington," Forbes declared.

His indignation did not move his tormentors. "He's clearly had a meltdown out there," said a top Dole road warrior, Nelson Warfield, the candidate's press secretary. "I mean, he spent millions on negative ads, and now he's upset that there are phone banks working against him?" Actually, it's important in war to know your enemies, and in this case Forbes may have missed the point. Every politician with a pulse lashes out at "the culture of Washington." Forbes was under fire last week because his insurgent campaign was slicing apart the G.O.P., and the party elders, activists and loyalists--inside and outside the capital--decided he had to be stopped.

Republican presidential primaries are normally royalist affairs, staid rituals of continuity posing briefly as wild free-for-alls. While Democrats can often be counted on to stage long catfights that rip apart the party so deeply that reassembly by November is impossible, Republicans prefer one-act passion plays in primogeniture. From watching Democrats, the G.O.P. has learned the cost of indulging in party soul searching for more than a few weeks.

But then out of the wilderness comes Forbes, messing with tradition. It was bad enough that the party, as it was winning converts to the balanced-budget faith, saw the crusade stall in Congress. Now here is Forbes preaching a supply-side gospel of tax cuts and growth, telling his growing crowds not to worry about the red ink--it will just trickle away. Every time he opens his mouth, he draws attention to one of the most sensitive, if open, secrets of a party in which everyone claims the mantle of Ronald Reagan. Party elders understand, even if some voters have yet to, that there is a basic contradiction between Reagan's supply-side economics and the balanced-budget crusade that has been both the hallmark of Dole's political career and his party's rallying cry since it took over Congress.