Republican retort to your post: Quayle Announces 2000 Run For White House
04:06 p.m Apr 14, 1999 Eastern
HUNTINGTON, Ind. (Reuters) -
Former Vice President Dan Quayle,
seeking to establish himself as a viable
force to a dubious electorate, announced
his candidacy Wednesday for the 2000
Republican presidential nomination.
''I've come back home ... to announce
that I will seek and I will win the
presidency,'' Quayle said, insisting he is
not worried about long odds and big
names lined up against him.
Standing before more than 5,000
people, Quayle appeared to compare his
status to the small-town Indiana high
school, depicted in the movie
''Hoosiers,'' which upset larger foes
more than a generation ago to capture the
state basketball title.
''They worked hard. They worked
together. They were determined. They
won and I will win,'' Quayle thundered,
drawing sustained applause from a
Huntington North High School crowd.
Despite his optimistic words and the
hometown crowd's big cheers, Quayle,
52, was in jeopardy of becoming the
first sitting or former vice president in
nearly a half century to be denied his
party's presidential nomination.
A variety of national polls show Quayle
running far behind the top group in a
pack of 10 Republican presidential
hopefuls, led by Texas Gov. George W.
Bush, the son of Quayle's former boss,
President George Bush.
Quayle's message is that his years on
Capitol Hill and as vice president make
him the ''best qualified and most
experienced'' to be the Republican
presidential nominee.
In announcing his presidential
candidacy, Quayle blasted the Clinton
administration and defended his own
trademark family values.
''We are coming to the end of the
dishonest decade of Bill Clinton and Al
Gore,'' Quayle said. ''I will stand firm
and fight for our values ... faith,
respect, responsibility, integrity,
courage and patriotism.''
Quayle noted that he sparked a national
debate on values as vice president in
1992 when he criticized ''Murphy
Brown,'' the lead character in a
television comedy show by the same
name, for having a baby out of wedlock.
''Murphy Brown is gone,'' Quayle
declared Wednesday. ''I'm still here
fighting for American values.''
In 1988, Bush picked Quayle as his vice
presidential choice, calling the then
41-year-old senator -- first elected to
Congress at 29 -- ''a rising star in the
Republican Party.''
But as the vice presidential nominee and
later as vice president, he was prone to
celebrated gaffes, like when he visited a
grade school and misspelled ''potato.''
''I'd put Dan Quayle's presidential
prospects at between dim and dimmer,''
said Stu Rothenberg of the Rothenberg
Political Reporter, a nonpartisan
publication that tracks presidential,
congressional and gubernatorial races.
''Even among people who like him,
who feel that he has been treated unfairly
in the past, there is no sense that Dan
Quayle is going to be the nominee,''
Rothenberg said.
As a leading conservative voice, Quayle
opposes abortion, favors a bolstered
national defense and has proposed a 30
percent across the board tax cut. He has
repeatedly criticized Clinton's foreign
policy.
Quayle said because of ''mistake after
mistake after mistake'' by the
administration on war-torn Yugoslavia,
there are ''no good options left'' to end
the crisis in Kosovo.
In an interview this week, Quayle said
he will prove his viability by winning
state presidential preference votes,
which will begin early next year, and by
raising money, a crucial ingredient of
any successful campaign.
Quayle raised more than $2 million in
campaign contributions during the first
quarter of this year, second only to
Bush, who raked in more than $6
million.
Quayle became the sixth Republican to
formally declare his presidential
candidacy, following Sens. Bob Smith
of New Hampshire and John McCain of
Arizona, columnist Patrick Buchanan,
publisher Steve Forbes and former
Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander.
Bush is expected to announce his
candidacy within the next several
months. So are three other Republicans,
Rep. John Kasich of Ohio, conservative
activist Gary Bauer and former Cabinet
secretary Elizabeth Dole.
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