BUCHANAN'S CHALLENGE RANKS WITH TR IN 1912, RR IN 1976

The revolt is on.

Patrick J. Buchanan's challenge places President George Bush in exclusive, if unwelcome company. With Buchanan's nearly 40 percent showing in Tuesday's New Hampshire primary, Mr. Bush, like his GOP predecessors William Howard Taft and Gerald Ford, faces an intraparty insurgency that seriously threatens his continuity in office. Both Taft (1912) and Ford (1976) went on to renomination before losing the White House in November, a rarity for an incumbent chief executive in peacetime.

Energized by fervent volunteers and lacking an endorsement from a single sitting governor, senator or representative, Buchanan's insurgent challenge to the establishment merits comparison with 1912 and 1976, the years that saw the most serious-ever threats to sitting Republican presidents. For this predicament, this President has no one to blame but George Herbert Walker Bush.

The 1912 election offers an instructive historical precedent, rife with parallels. Then, as now, we were late into an extended era of Republican dominance of presidential politics. The 72-year period from Abraham Lincoln (1860) to Franklin D. Roosevelt (1932) saw more than three generations of Republican presidential dominance. In that 72-year span, only two Democrats (Grover Cleveland and Woodrow Wilson) broke through the GOP firewall to win the White House.

In 1912, as during the past four years, a hugely popular Republican presidency had been followed by an anointed successor who disappointed the predecessor's followers by repudiating much of his forerunner's policies.

Wilson's 1912 win could not have occurred absent a split in the Republican ranks. Former President Teddy Roosevelt and his backers passionately believed that President William Howard Taft, TR's anointed successor, had betrayed a TR reform legacy that had redefined the Republican Party and changed the course of history. Across a range of issues, Taft's abandonment of TR's policies was even more complete and undeniable than Bush's turn away from Reaganism.

As Taft sought a second term, an irrepressible TR, unable to stomach further repudiation of his legacy, came roaring out of retirement to challenge his hand-picked successor. In that age of patronage and party bosses, Taft's control of all the incumbent's power levers permitted him to beat back the more popular Roosevelt's intra-party challenge and go on to win renomination by the Republican Party.

The charismatic and immensely popular Roosevelt arrived in Chicago for the Republican National Convention that summer. Emerging from the train upon his arrival, Roosevelt met newspaper reporters who asked how he was feeling. The former president and Spanish-American War hero flashed his famous smile and responded: "I feel as strong as a bull moose."

As the Taft-controlled convention unfolded, Roosevelt led a walkout of his supporters, who crossed town to form a new, progressive party for the fall campaign. In the moniker "Bull Moose", the new party had a name as vigorous and inspirational as its champion.

Interestingly, TR inspired loyalty in a 20-year-old student at an obscure, little Normal School in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. That student was the editor of the Capaha Arrow, Rush Hudson Limbaugh. Like millions of other GOP loyalists that year, Mr. Limbaugh followed his hero out of the GOP and into the Bull Moose Party for the fall campaign. Turning 21 in September, Mr. Rush cast his first vote for Roosevelt and the progressive Bull Moose cause. Eighty years later, Mr. Rush's grandson and namesake blankets New Hampshire like a February blizzard, through a radio talk show that undoubtedly influenced the outcome there. My guess is that Rush III added anywhere from 2-5 points to Buchanan's Granite State vote total by endorsing the challenger beginning last Thursday, five days out from the primary.

With the 1912 GOP vote split between Taft and TR's Bull Moosers, Woodrow Wilson became only the second Democrat to win the White House since Lincoln launched the GOP ascendancy 52 years earlier. After two Wilson terms and a World War, there would be three more GOP presidents until 1932, when a Depression and a Democratic cousin of TR's FDR broke the GOP's back and spawned two generations of Democratic ascendancy.

Has Pat Buchanan the widespread appeal of Teddy Roosevelt, or even Ronald Reagan, circa 1976? Of course not. I have twice written here that Buchanan is an illegitimate heir to the Reagan legacy of a working folks' conservatism with a smiling face. Is George Bush as hapless a figure as the unelected Gerald Ford? No, indeed.

Late Tuesday night, when early returns made it look as though Buchanan had captured more than 40 percent in New Hampshire, George Bush and his handlers put out a statement. It read, "Message received."

Maybe. Republicans who want their chant of "Four more years!" to be more than a hollow slogan had better hope so. But 47 percent of the New Hampshire voters who took a GOP ballot Tuesday voted for somebody other than Mr. Bush. Where will they be in November?

Mr. Bush has overcome daunting historical challenges before. Down 18 points in August 1988 to Michael Dukakis a deficit no candidate had ever made up so late Bush roared back by Labor Day to a lead he never lost, winning 40 states that November to become the first sitting vice president to capture the White House in 152 years.

Still, in '88 Bush wasn't facing the pit bull of the American Right, with a large base of disaffected conservatives (many of whom yearn for someone other than Buchanan to make their case). Bush should prevail, and betting folks will still handicap him the favorite for a second term. But .... this one should stay interesting for a while.