Politics

GOP On The Road Again

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

December 6, 1999 / 8:57 AM EST / CBS

It's back to the campaign trail for the GOP hopefuls Tuesday.

Two remain in Arizona, one remains in New Hampshire, and a fourth moves to Louisiana.

Candidates for the Republican presidential nomination squared off Monday night in Phoenix, in their second debate in four days. The six men reiterated many of the promises from Thursday's showdown, including safer schools, lower taxes and a more disciplined foreign policy.

"My plan says less power to Washington, not more," said Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the front-runner.

"I'll keep `em out of it," Arizona Sen. John McCain said of Washington bureaucrats.

Hours after a school shooting in Fort Gibson, Okla., left four students injured and underscored growing concerns about school violence across the country, conservative activist Gary Bauer said allowing religion into the schools would lead to better-behaved children.
"I don't think it's a gun problem," he said. "I think this is a problem of the heart and soul."

Five of the six candidates posed for cameras before the debate. John McCain made a satellite appearance.

The Arizona Republican Party organized the debate on behalf of Bush after he missed their first debate on Nov. 21. Monday's debate was co-sponsored by CNN, which televised it nationally from the Orpheum Theater.

The network crafted a novel approach, allowing the candidates to question each other at one point. But most the of queries and replies were painfully polite and allowed the candidates to deliver mini-versions of their stump speeches. Their criticisms were subtle, often hidden in long-winded questions, such as when Steve Forbes mentioned his opposition to Bush's tax plan almost in passing, when he posed a question to McCain.

On campaign finance reform and Internet taxes, two topics in which he has differences with Bush, McCain directed his questions not to Bush, but to the like-minded Bauer and Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah.

Reality Check
Click here
for CBS News Correspondent Eric Engberg's Reality Check on the debate - a wry look backstage at politics.

With few exceptions, the candidates -- Bush, McCain, Bauer, Forbes, Hatch and former ambassador Alan Keyes -- avoided the kind of bickering that marked the last two weeks of the campaign and highlighted last Thursday's debate in New Hampshire. The toughest assessment of Bush came from the good-natured Hatch.

"You need more experience before you become president of the Unied States, and that's why I'm thinking of you as a vice presidential candidate," said Hatch, whose campaign is mired in the low single digits. "You should have eight years with me and, boy, you'll make a heck of a president."

Bush laughed. The Texan also shrugged off Bauer's comparison between Bush and President Clinton on China policy. "You know how to insult a guy," Bush quipped.

Forbes did press Bush, a former oil man, about what he would do to keep fuel prices low during New Hampshire's cold winters. He said he would encourage exploration and alternative fuels, and said: "Governments don't control the price of oil, at least not in America."

The candidates also fielded questions about the economy and tax cuts, with each offering different ways to trim taxes.

McCain, appearing by satellite from Boston, said tax cuts need to benefit the low to middle classes. "There are terrible inequities in the tax code. We've got to get the special interests out of it so it's not 44,000 pages long and a nightmare for average citizens and a cornucopia for special interests in Washington, D.C."

Bush dodged a question about what he would do if the government surplus grew at a slower rate than he projected in his $483 billion, five-year tax plan. "I refuse to accept the premise that surpluses will decline if I were president," Bush said.

Forbes, who supports a dramatic flat-tax overhaul of the Internal Revenue Service, criticized what he called the "crazy theory" that prosperity leads to inflation. It was a subtle broadside at Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.

Gov. George W. Bush

He also criticized a Clinton administration proposal allowing states to use extra unemployment funds to provide paid leave to new parents. "Credits from Washington and raiding unemployment funds is not going to do the job."

On foreign policy, the six rivals criticized the Clinton administration's wide range of overseas engagements.

"It is foolish and imprudent to be sending our men everywhere when the national security of the United States is not at stake," Bauer said. Forbes suggested that sending U.S. peacekeepers to Haiti, Somalia and Bosnia were mistakes.

The first segment of the hour-long debate allowed a minute for each candidate to answer a question from the moderators, followed by two rounds where they questioned one another, but each candidate could only be asked one question per round. In other words, for example, Bush's five rivals couldn't all pose their questions to him.

Bush begins airing two television ads in Arizona and other early primary states on Tuesday that tell voters of his support for tax cuts and educationa reform.

He planned to campaign in Arizona on Tuesday, including a speech to a joint meeting of the Arizona Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the Arizona Chamber of Commerce.

Forbes launches a two-day bus tour through some of the state's smaller communities after the debate. The route includes stops in Surprise, Prescott, Cottonwood, Kingman, Bullhead City and Lake Havasu City.

McCain spends most of the day in New Hampshire, but wraps up Tuesday at the Intrepid Sea Air Space Museum, aboard USS Intrepid in New York City, where he's expected to deliver what his campaign calls "a major national security policy speech."

Bauer campaigns Tuesday in Louisiana, including a session on CBS Radio affiliate WWL-AM in New Orleans. Schedules for Hatch and Keyes were not available.

Here are the candidates' Web sites:

For a story on how the Internet is changing the presidential campaign, see Stumping On The Web here on CBS.com.