That audience isn't the vast majority of Republicans here, who resemble the flinty caricature of independence less than at any time since the New Hampshire primary began in 1916. Trying to emerge Quayle's campaign style, more than anyone else's in the race, underscores the strategies that animate the Republican contest in 2000. He probably can't win it. He is merely trying to emerge from the granite notches and valleys as the candidate of the conservatives. That wouldn't mean much except for the peculiar architecture of this race.
Republican candidates think of the contest as a split-level house.
That's why, on a radio show in Manchester the other morning, Quayle, now 52, went out of his way to note that Republicans weaken themselves when they choose the Establishment candidate. Recalling the insurgency That very year, Quayle, a boyish candidate for the House, backed Reagan against the president of his own party, who eventually lost to Jimmy Carter. He did just fine. In 1958, when Quayle lived in Arizona and went to the state fairgrounds with his mother, she wore her AuH20 sash and he handed out pamphlets for Goldwater, who six years later became the godfather to modern conservatism. By that time Quayle was Goldwater chairman in Huntington High School in Indiana.