"I'd rather run against his issue profile than someone who is more moderate," said Charlie Black, a longtime adviser to Republicans. "But he's run a great campaign and has a lot of smart people around him."
Rich Bond, a Republican consultant and former chairman of the Republican National Committee, said that as Dean seeks to broaden his appeal, he will have a hard time pleasing the followers who were animated by his antiwar stance, or dispelling early impressions about his loose tongue. "He's an angry white guy -- the media has made up its mind about this guy," Bond said. "Even if he tries to get back in the middle, his activist supporters won't let him."
Kenneth M. Duberstein, chief of staff to President Ronald Reagan, said that Dean was likely to emulate not McGovern but former Massachusetts governor Michael S. Dukakis, who made an effort to move to the center before being defeated by Bush's father. Duberstein said a Bush-Dean race could be "highly competitive until the autumn," when he believes Bush would pull away.
No senior Republican acknowledged fearing that Dean would end up beating Bush. But these officials are banking on vast improvements in the situation in Iraq and in the job market.
Joe Trippi, Dean's campaign manager, said that he believes Dean "will be able to fight back, dollar for dollar," and can match Bush's pre-convention bank account by raising $100 each from 2 million people, or perhaps $200 from 1 million people, between the time the nomination is secured and the Democratic convention in late July.
"Every decision that we've made, from the beginning, was to build a campaign that could defeat George Bush and win the nomination," Trippi said. "Their whole theory has been to excite their base and depress the Democratic base. They haven't planned for a Democratic base that is so energized."
Every week brings new signs that Republicans are adjusting. The Club for Growth, a free-market advocacy group that is a leading source of outside funds for GOP campaigns, has been running an ad in Iowa and New Hampshire that shows Dean as a part of a tax-raising continuum beginning with McGovern and continuing through former vice president Walter F. Mondale, who lost to Reagan in the landslide of 1984, and Dukakis. "Will Howard Dean ever learn?" the ad asks.
RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie traveled to Dean's home state this month to give a speech accusing him of being untruthful about his decision to seal the records of his governorship for 10 years, longer than any previous Vermont governor. "As everyone in this room surely knows, your former governor would never say one thing and do another," Gillespie said.
In the clearest public sign yet that Bush officials have Dean on their mind, the campaign recently sent supporters a video called "When Angry Democrats Attack!" It shows footage of three Democratic hopefuls jabbing the air and seeming to snarl during public appearances. The clips on the 30-second video, which is posted on the campaign's Web site, open and close with shots of Dean.
