Watch Your Back, George

By DAVID ELLIS/

Conservatives are speaking more openly about the "nuclear option," and it has nothing to do with the gulf crisis. That's the code phrase true believers have given nascent plans to mount a right-wing challenge to George Bush in 1992. The main purpose of such a kamikaze mission would be to force Bush to return to the fold on taxes. Activists, including American Conservative Union chief David Keene and former Reagan Administration official Don Devine, have convened several times in secret to plot strategy. Two groups met last weekend, one in Dallas and another in suburban Maryland, and talk of rebellion is becoming more public. An upcoming article in the Heritage Foundation's quarterly Policy Review recalls Teddy Roosevelt's 1912 Bull Moose challenge to fellow Republican William Howard Taft, which resulted in a Democratic victory, and suggests such an outcome might be preferable to the "betrayals of the Bush Administration." G.O.P. hard-liners say they fear that if one of their own does not challenge Bush, former Klansman David Duke will try to become the right-wing standard-bearer.

With reporting by David E. Thigpen