BOSTON--President Bush's Massachusetts re-election campaign hauled out the big guns last night as Vice President Dan Quayle spoke to several hundred supporters at a rally inside Quincy Market.
On the eve of primary elections in 11 states, Quayle attacked congressional Democrats for not passing Bush's economic proposals announced in the State of the Union address last month.
Quayle was joined on the platform by Gov. William F. Weld '66, Lt. Gov. Paul Cellucci, State Republican Party Chair Leon Lombardi and State Rep. Dave Peters.
The event, which was closed to the public, stood in sharp contrast to the raucous rally for former California Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. a few hundred feet away on Boston Common, which drew over 1000 people.
The tight security at the Quayle event resulted in the ejection of three supporters of Patrick J. Buchanan, Bush's most serious challenger this primary season.
The three men were escorted from the room shortly after Quayle began speaking, when they extracted pro-Buchanan signs that they had smuggled in beneath their jackets.
Despite the protests and the election eve feel of the event, Quayle stuck to familiar themes--condemning the Democrat-controlled Congress for not passing Bush's plan for economic recovery.
Quayle said the plan, outlined in Bush's State of the Union Address in January, would decrease unemployment and lower taxes for the middle class.
Democrat leaders in the House and Senate have opposed the plan, saying that Bush's economic policies would likely be popular but would have little real impact on the economy.
While Peters criticized Buchanan by name in his opening speech, Quayle maintained the Bush campaign practice of only acknowledging "a protest vote" that the president is taking into account.
"George Bush is doing something about it," Quayle said to cheers from the crowd, which gathered about an hour before the speech.
Quayle also deflected Democratic labeling of the GOP as the party of the rich.
"The Democrats define anyone who has a job as rich," Quayle said.
Quayle went on to call for change in the "civil justice system," claiming that while the U.S. has eight percent of the world's population, it has 70 percent of the world's lawyers.
Quayle said the Bush administration reform policies would "make the legal system more fair for all Americans."
The vice president also called for congressional term limits, saying many members of Congress are "totally out of touch with reality."
If limiting the terms of Bush and Ronald Reagan was "good for the nation," Quayle said, "Then it is certainly good for the nation to limit to two terms people like Senator Ted Kennedy," referring to the fifth-term Democratic senator from Massachusetts.
Outside the rally, a mish-mash of protesters, including Brown, Buchanan and Ralph Nader supporters, held signs and chanted slogans.
Several times during Quayle's speech, some of the protesters pounded on the closed doors of the room on the second floor of Quincy Market's central building where the rally was held.
And three Buchanan supporters brought the protest inside with sings advertising their candidate.
When security confiscated the signs, a prolonged, muffled but audible argument ensued between the men and several campaign aides.
Ted Marivelias, a 23-year-old Danvers, Mass. resident who carried one of the signs, protested the group's expulsion, citing a Massachusetts' open meeting law.
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