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By LOU HATTER
Rappahannock New* Staff Writer
Former Virginia Attorney General Marshall Coleman came to Rappahannock as a surrogate for George Bush, but when Mr. Coleman lit into Michael Dukakis he sounded like the Republican presidential nominee himself.
“My assessment of the Dukakis campaign is like that old song, ‘Why is Everybody Always Picking on Me?’,” Mr. Coleman said, addressing about a half-dozen residents and Republican Party supporters on the Courthouse lawn on Sept. 15. He told them that his son had summed up the Democratic nominee’s situation better than anyone else: “Dukakis isn’t telling anyone where he stands, so George Bush is doing it for him.” And, Mr. Coleman added, “When Michael Dukakis says that he’s going to do for the United States what he has done for Massachusetts, that’s not a promise — that’s a threat!”
Mr. Coleman laced into the Massachusetts governor as “a man very much of a different age — not from, the ’80s. He’s a leftover from the ’60s.” Mr. Dukakis, he said, “is soft on crime, weak on defense, permissive on drugs and high on taxes. He is opposed to traditional values.”
He assailed Mr. Dukakis’s position on defense issues as “naive.” Mr. Coleman pointed out that the world is a different place than it used to be — that the system of American overseas military bases, in place for many years, “isn’t working as well as before.” A Reagan Administration ^proposal for two new aircraft carrier task forces, which Mr. Dukakis opposes, are necessary substitutes for those bases, Mr. Coleman maintained. And, he added, since they would be built in Virginia it would mean jobs for the state.
“He is extremely naive in foreign policy. If the nuclear freeze which he supported had been in effect we never could have negotiated the INF (Intermediate Nuclear Forces) treaty,” Mr. Coleman said, repeating a Bush campaign theme. He pointed to the recent Soviet agreement to withdraw from Afghanistan as another example of how a strong, conservative American leadership had faced down the Russians.
Addressing the Virginia political scene, Mr. Coleman said, “I’m prepared to predict that we will elec® a Republican congressman from tke Seventh District.” The incumbent, D. French Slaughter Jr., is running unopposed for the seat.
Of Maurice Dawkins, the Republican nominee for the Senate seat being vacated by Paul Trible, Mr. Coleman said, “the lesson of 1988 will be that no one is unbeatable.” The Democrats, he added, have fielded “a very beatable candidate” in former Gov. Charles Robb.
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