SENATOR Bob Dole of Kansas swept all 93 New York Republican delegates into his victory column on Thursday, making his nomination as the party's presidential candidate in November almost inevitable.
His two challengers still in the race, television commentator and newspaper columnist Pat Buchanan, and magazine publisher Steve Forbes, still vow to fight all the way to the Republican National Convention in San Diego, California, five months from now. But their cause looks increasingly hopeless.
There will be 1,990 delegates at the convention, and 996 are required for nomination. Only a few hundred delegates have been elected so far. Dole has 360 after New York and is campaigning, hard for "Super Tuesday's (March 12th) bonanza of delegates in seven states, including the big ones, Texas and Florida.
Dole will be 73 when they give him the convention prize in August, the oldest candidate ever to seek the presidency. Ronald Reagan was 69 when he ran in 1980.
There was nothing inevitable about Dole's string of victories after a number of defeats. He was stumbling along from state primary to state primary, contradicting himself, sometimes in the same sentence, particularly about abortion, which he didn't want to talk about at all. He hates debates and reads his speeches, occasionally inserting an off-the-cuff and caustic humourous remark which often lands him in trouble, which is why his aides insist he read from scripts.
If you are Bob Dole and were elected to public office in 1950 as a legislator in the state of Kansas as a wounded war hero, and went to the US Congress in 1961, 35 years ago, you need to put your ideas on paper, they tell him.
Dole came in second and sometimes third in the early primaries. The television people kept saying: "This is Bob Dole's moment of truth." He lost New Hampshire to Buchanan a populist of the right, and Arizona to Forbes.
Forbes doesn't have to account for his campaign spending because the money is his own, unlike Dole, who is close to the $37 million limit for primaries. Forbes had hoped Dole would run out of cash.
Forbes was on the ballot in all 31 New York congressional districts and thought he would win some delegates. He spent $1 million in a court action to get on the ballot, which the party bosses in New York State controlled as if the ballots were their own private property. Buchanan made a poor showing in New York because Republican voters considered him "too extreme".
Dole spent the day in Florida rousing Cuban exiles against Fidel Castro for next Tuesday's primary. "You've kept up the struggle," he told them. "You haven't given up." He meant the struggle against Castro. If elected, he will not "cosy up to Castro", like Bill Clinton, presumably, whom he must defeat in November. "It is time to indict and try the murderers of February 24th", he added. That is the day the two Cessnas were blown out of the sky with their crews off the coast of Cuba.
The Dole campaign aroused little enthusiasm even among those who voted for him. It was run by Senator Al D'Amato, with little advertising because of Dole's tight money problem. He avoided advertising on New York's expensive TV and radio stations.
Buchanan, who can take credit for knocking George Bush out of the ring in 1992, despite his 93 per cent popularity rating coming out of the Gulf War, is likely to pursue Dole just as relentlessly for the next five months.
With his zealous followers to cheer him on, he will demand both prime-time convention exposure and a constitutional amendment banning abortion. Dole wants to avoid both issues. He knows they will cost him votes in November against President Clinton.