Get Ready To Parry

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Republican presidential challengers have tried everything to goad Texas Governor George W. Bush off his front porch in Austin. What's he afraid of? they've asked. He's nothing but a name, they've whispered. But Bush has just smiled--his poll numbers have stayed stratospheric and the satchels full of checks are still coming in to his ZIP code. Last week Elizabeth Dole threw a tomato. Though she did not mention Bush by name, the former Cabinet secretary launched a verbal missile in the post-Littleton gun-control debate, declaring that it was "wrong to let people carry concealed weapons." Her target was obvious. Bush, who had signed a 1995 law allowing Texans to tuck registered handguns into their purses and coat pockets, fired back through a spokesman on the same day. Texans were now safer, came the riposte, "particularly women who work late hours or who travel."

Dole's zinger on guns--and the Bush operation's rapid response--were just a preview to the political cut and thrust that will begin next month, when the Governor is scheduled to wrap up the legislative session in Austin and make his first campaign trips to Iowa and New Hampshire. Frustrated by Bush's dominance of the race, some rival campaigns have dispatched operatives to Texas to scour newspaper clippings and state budget reports, pick over old speeches and offhand remarks, quiz Bush enemies and even some old friends, all in search of information they can use to diminish Bush's aura of invincibility. The goal: to use Bush's record and his status as the chosen candidate of the G.O.P. establishment against him. Warns an operative working for another candidate: "From the minute George W. hits the campaign trail, he'll be under assault and on the defensive." Here is an early target list being compiled by Bush's opponents:

THE IMPERIAL CANDIDATE Jealous rivals will try to turn Bush's high poll numbers into a liability by accusing him of remaining aloof from primary voters. Each time he skips a cattle call for candidates or dodges a debate, he'll be slammed for taking rank-and-file Republicans for granted. The Bush campaign's quiet efforts to avoid a presidential straw poll scheduled for early August in Ames, Iowa, have angered some Iowa Republicans. Not that Bush's view of Ames as a booby trap isn't justified. Straw polls--where participants pay to vote--can be manipulated by rivals to make front runners look bad. Bush's rivals are already starting. They claim that Bush cutouts floated the idea of "reimbursing" the state G.O.P. for canceling the event. When that didn't work, they quietly inquired whether other big-name campaigns might join Bush in skipping Ames, hoping to render it meaningless. The Bush camp denies both charges.