Forbes Draws GOP Fire at Debate in Des Moines

DES MOINES —  Publishing magnate Steve Forbes, the fastest rising star on the Republican presidential horizon, paid the penalty for his recent campaign gains Saturday when he came under sharp attack from several of his rivals at a nationally televised debate here.

With the crucial Iowa caucuses four weeks away, the 90-minute forum featuring nine candidates also was marked by derisive sniping between Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, the GOP front-runner, and Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas.

Former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander led the charge against Forbes, ridiculing the flat-tax plan that is the central theme of the publisher’s candidacy as “a truly nutty idea in the Jerry Brown tradition.” He used the line twice in his effort to link Forbes to former California Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., who pushed a flat-tax proposal as part of his 1992 Democratic presidential bid.

Alexander predicted that adoption of Forbes’ version of the flat tax would cause a “real estate crash” because it would eliminate the tax deduction for mortgage interest. He also charged it would end hopes for a balanced federal budget by reducing revenue.

Forbes, who has been forced on the defensive after steadily climbing in public opinion polls as he has spent millions from his personal fortune on ads promoting his tax idea, fought back.

Labeling his attackers “traditional politicians,” he said they “can’t stand the idea” of a flat tax because it would “take away the principal source of their power” and “change the culture of Washington.”

And at every opportunity, he touted his flat tax, which would replace the graduated system with a 17% levy on income after exempting the first $36,000 for a family of four and abolishing taxes on personal savings, Social Security, pensions and capital gains. He said it is the surest way to create a “vibrant economy” for the United States.

Referring to Forbes’ attempts to offer the flat tax as the main answer to the nation’s ills, Alexander likened it to the myth of the Great Pumpkin.

Alexander also took several shots at Dole, but most of the fire directed at the Kansas senator came from Gramm.

Taking note of recent Dole comments that caused some conservatives to question his commitment to the anti-abortion movement, Gramm accused Dole of “being on three sides of a two-sided issue.” He also criticized him for not adhering to conservative principles during GOP leaders’ continuing negotiations with President Clinton over the budget.

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But Dole gave at least as good as he got. After Gramm wondered aloud whether Dole was in the process of cutting “a secret deal” with Clinton on the budget, his rival jibed: “Next time you’re in town, let’s talk about it.”

The line drew a laugh from the audience. But it also made a distinction between Dole, the Senate leader whose duties often require him to remain in Washington, and Gramm, who has been free to campaign--and criticize--because he has no role in the budget talks.

As he continued his response to Gramm’s “secret deal” comment, Dole employed, for the first time in the 1996 campaign, the sort of sharp barb that has backfired on him in the past. Turning to the Iowa high school girl whose question on college loans had sparked the exchange, he remarked that it was “a lot better question” than Gramm’s on the budget negotiations.

He then cracked: “She’s passed every grade she’s ever been in.”

Some in the audience laughed while others groaned in reaction to Dole’s allusion to Gramm’s stump-speech staple--that he flunked the third, seventh and ninth grades but went on to become an economics professor.

Gramm got his chance to retort in his closing remarks, saying: “When you failed third, seventh and ninth grades and you go on to get a Ph.D. in economics, you know something about doing hard things and overcoming long odds.”

It was Forbes--whose rise has hindered the efforts of Gramm, Alexander and conservative commentator Patrick J. Buchanan to emerge as the clear alternative to Dole--who was the repeated target during the debate.

Buchanan, saying he wanted “to be fair and join in the piling-on a little bit,” declared that the flat tax he is pushing is “middle-class-oriented” because it would retain the home mortgage deduction. He then told Forbes: “Yours looks like it was worked up by the boys down at the yacht basin.”

Even Morry Taylor, an Illinois businessman whose odds of winning the nomination may be the steepest among the candidates, took time to criticize the Forbes flat tax. Noting that under the proposal he would pay no taxes on $15 million in capital gains while workers at his wheel factories would pay 17% of their wages, Taylor said: “It’s nuts.”

Gramm joined in the assault on Forbes by claiming that in some of his magazine columns, the publisher opposed proposals for a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution. Forbes said he had been against these proposals because they did not specifically rule out increases in taxes to achieve budget balance.

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Alexander, however, questioned Forbes’ commitment to not raising taxes, and in the process took a poke at his personal wealth and political inexperience. “Steve, the only thing you’ve ever run is a magazine you inherited, and you raised the price of your magazine. Now, what would you do with taxes?”

Dole suggested sarcastically that a Republican president might be able to break any future deadlock in budget negotiations by borrowing money from Forbes to keep the government running.

The battering of Forbes was so intense that Rep. Robert K. Dornan of Garden Grove, another of the field’s longshots, said: “I’m going to leave Steve alone--everybody is beating up on him.”

Dornan showed no such mercy toward Clinton, whom he has frequently denounced in the past. On Saturday, Dornan labeled Clinton “a pathological liar.” He also said he believed the accusations of Paula Corbin Jones, the former Arkansas state employee who has charged Clinton with sexually harassing her while he was governor of Arkansas. “I think we have a criminal in the White House,” Dornan said.

None of the other candidates engaged in such harsh rhetoric about the incumbent, but Alexander broached Clinton’s name in pursuing a theme he recently unveiled on the campaign trail: that Dole is too much of a Capitol insider and congressional deal-maker to supply the vision and inspire the support needed to defeat the incumbent.

Alexander warned fellow Republicans that if the party and its nominee focus too much on “what’s going on in Congress instead of families and how to get a bill out of a subcommittee instead of rebuilding families . . . Bill Clinton’s going to be reelected.”

And speaking directly to Dole, whom some support because of his long service to his party, Alexander said: “It may be your turn, but it’s not your revolution. It’s not your time.”

Dole, however, was undeterred in stressing his experience as a legislator. Listing his efforts on behalf of welfare reform, tougher criminal laws and tax cuts for families with children, Dole said: “I know those things happened in Congress, Lamar, but a lot of good things happen in Congress.”

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And in his closing statement, he spoke in third person to summarize what he would offer the nation as the Republican nominee. “Bob Dole is not a polarizer,” he said. “Bob Dole provides leadership. Bob Dole delivers. Bob Dole tries to get things done.”

Former State Department official Alan Keyes, the most stirring stump speaker among the candidates, used the debate to spotlight the centerpiece of his campaign: strengthening the “marriage-based, two-parent family.”

Keyes won a chuckle from the audience when, in response to a question about the nation’s racial conflicts, he said: “I’m tempted to say that the most important thing I can do to improve race relations in America is get elected president. . . .”

Keyes is the lone African American among the candidates.

Answering the same question, Sen. Richard G. Lugar of Indiana said that as president, he would seek to capitalize on the commitment to family and community that was stressed by so many of the black men attending the “Million Man March” in Washington last fall.

After the debate, Gramm defended the criticism heaped on Forbes by so many of his rivals. “The people are starting to see his flat-tax proposal and are seeing things wrong with it,” he said.

And Scott Reed, Dole’s campaign manager, claimed that Forbes has been “getting a free ride” until the debate because the other candidates had not challenged him directly.

“It’s appropriate that people look at his ideas, which are risky,” Reed said.

But Forbes told reporters: “I’m actually feeling encouraged because it shows my message is taking root. . . . That’s why they had to attack me. The outsider can beat the insiders.”

Times staff writer Henry Chu contributed to this story.