Quayle Is Dispatched to Fire Up Faithful : Republicans: He assumes cheerleader role in effort to build party spirit--and run down Democratic nominee.

By ART PINE

Oct. 31, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

DENVER — Vice President Dan Quayle is spending his final week on the campaign trail fighting a rear-guard action: His mission is to shore up the GOP faithful and get them to turn out for George Bush on Tuesday.

The formula is simple: Quayle travels to GOP strongholds, trying to get Republicans excited about the ticket again and to persuade supporters of independent candidate Ross Perot to vote for Bush instead.

His targets are states where voters traditionally have gone Republican but where this year the race is too close to call.

Last weekend, the vice president stumped in Florida and Georgia. Now, he is on a sweep of Western states--Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Nevada and Nebraska--and Iowa. On Sunday, he’ll head south again.

Quayle’s role essentially is as a cheerleader--to build party spirit as best he can and to run down Democratic candidate Bill Clinton. The issues: the twin poles of “taxes and trust” that have been Bush’s strategy for weeks.

“Is this crowd pumped up?” he asks the crowd rhetorically as soon as the applause that follows his introduction tapers off. “Is this crowd fired up? Are you ready to vote for George Bush next Tuesday?”

Then comes the part where the audience is primed to boo: “Bill Clinton will raise your taxes. Would you trust Bill Clinton to take care of your family? (“Boooo.”) Would you trust Bill Clinton with your children?”

And, finally, there is the inevitable bogyman: the pollsters and the national media, who have been predicting that Bill Clinton will win.

“Do you want the national media to decide this election?” Quayle asks. (More boos.) “Have the media been fair to George Bush? Have the media been fair to Dan Quayle? (“Nooo.”) Annoy the media--reelect George Bush!”

On Friday, while Bush was comparing the “character issue” in this campaign with the questions surrounding the appointment of former Sen. John Tower (R-Tex.) as defense secretary, Quayle delivered the same message here.

“I ask you . . . does Bill Clinton pass the Tower test?” he admonished an airport rally here. “I think he (Clinton) failed the test of integrity,” he told the group.

There has been no real attention to issues. Everything is spin. Quayle warns the crowd that Clinton plans to raise inheritance taxes. (He hasn’t. Actually, it’s a bill by two key lawmakers that hasn’t gotten anywhere.)

He warns that the “liberal, greedy Democratic Congress” has amassed $895 billion in spending bills that would be passed if Clinton is elected. (It’s a tabulation of all the bills that Democrats introduced--most of which died.)

And he warns of “long waiting lines at the hospital” if Clinton gets his health-insurance plan through Congress. (There are flaws in Clinton’s plan, but few experts are predicting that outcome if it is enacted.)

No matter about the lapses. The crowds, mostly GOP audiences that have come to hear Quayle give ‘em hell--always with a local GOP congressional candidate on the platform for the vice president to boost--love it.

With the polls still close enough to provide some surprises, it’s too early to tell whether Quayle is doing enough to make much difference, but there is no doubt that he is getting Republicans stirred up.

One indicator is in the response that Quayle sparks when he attacks the media. Audiences have become more fired up, cheering at everything, almost no matter what he says, and sometimes berating reporters who are standing on the sidelines after Quayle lambastes the media. On Wednesday night, a Secret Service agent got beaned by a youth who presumably thought the man was a TV reporter.

For all the excitement at the stump speeches, however, there is a sameness about the campaign’s pace. One staple is for Quayle to spend a few minutes at a “scheduled impromptu”--visiting a roadside restaurant and walking from table to table. Despite some occasional oohs, most customers take it in stride.

And, occasionally, as he did in Tucson on Wednesday, the vice president will “drop in” on a practice session for a high school football team, where he can toss the ball around for a few minutes--good stuff for the evening news.

Add to that the inevitable fund-raisers--Quayle has been at one or two a day--and a spate of local TV interviews and the vice president’s days are full, if not necessarily frenetic. Thursday’s workday, for example, ended at 10 p.m.

How well his days have been spent remains to be seen. In Las Vegas on Thursday, the bookies were pegging the odds against Bush’s winning at 2 to 1. That was better than the 4 to 1 they were giving last week.