DALLAS -- Vice President George Bush today joked that Geraldine Ferraro's financial forms show the woman from Archie Bunker's neighborhood in Queens really is more like multimillionaire Pamela Harriman.
In one of his first comments on Ms. Ferraro's financial disclosure forms, Bush -- whose own net worth is $2.1 million -- told delegates from Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont that he found the financial disclosure forms of the Democratic vice presidential candidate 'interesting.'
The financial disclosure forms filed by Ms. Ferraro and her husband, John Zaccaro, show the couple have a net worth of about $3.8 million.
'I was looking at all of this financial disclosure and it looks like Edith and Archie have turned out to be Pamela and Averell Harrimann, darling,' Bush said with a forced Eastern accent so it sounded like 'dahling.'
The delegates roared, and Bush added, 'I'd better be careful, or I'll be giving elitism a bad name.'
Ms. Ferraro, who represents the borough of Queens in New York City, frequently mentions in campaign speeches that her constituents are working-class Americans from the neighborhood of Archie Bunker -- a character in the popular television show, 'All in the Family' and 'Archie Bunker's Place.'
Bush arrived in Dallas on the eve of the convention, acting as the advance guard of the GOP ticket and spending most of his time early in the week trying to shore up ties with moderate Republican groups.
But President Reagan comes to town today and Bush will meet him when Air Force One lands in the afternoon. The two were to appear jointly at an elaborately staged rally in the atrium of their gaudy Dallas hotel.
'Batten down the hatches -- the welcome is going to be terrific,' Bush said he told the president by phone Tuesday.
Reagan and Bush will be renominated for second terms tonight and both will give accepance speeches during the last conention session Thursday night.
In his first three days here, Bush has struck sympathetic chords with politically moderate delegations, telling everyone the GOP promise is one of 'hope and optimism' contrasted with the 'doom and gloom' of the Democrats.
Although Bush repeatedly attacks Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale for being a captive of special interests, his own schedule has been a masterpiece of interest group politics.
By the time he leaves Dallas, Bush will have spoken before GOP caucuses of women, blacks, New England moderates, Jews, senior citizens and Hispanics.
In a series of interviews, Bush also used his time in the spotlight to lash out at those 'on the very far extremes' who opposed him in 1980 and are trying to keep him from getting the 1988 presidential nomination.
'I am a conservative, but I'm not a nut about it,' he said on CBS Tuesday night.
The extremists, who he identified as direct mail wizard Richard Viguerie by name and National Conservative Political Action Committee leader Terry Dolan by implication, have no influence, Bush said, and don't represent 'the conservative bent of the Republican Party.'
Those on 'the very far extremes' have criticized Reagan 'with a vitriol when they don't agree, and they want to make the party smaller,' Bush said. 'Those people will never be for me.'
Bush on Monday attacked 'fringe' elements in the party as the 'severest critics of the president' who are 'irrelevant' and not even Republicans.
An aide said Bush was angry about Dolan's suggestion that moderates and liberals leave the GOP. Bush also had in mind Viguerie, who devoted an issue of his magazine, Conservative Digest, earlier this year to savaging Bush as too liberal for the Reagan administration, the aide said.
'Viguerie and Dolan belong in Tent City with the demonstrators,' the aide said, calling them 'Contras' of the party. 'Contras' are the right-wing rebels fighting the leftist government of Nicaragua with U.S. support.
