Bush Says GOP Will Recover From Loss : Republicans: He and Quayle receive tributes at capital banquet welcoming party’s newly elected members of Senate.

WASHINGTON —  President Bush, in his first extended remarks since his Election Day defeat, Tuesday night received an emotional tribute from fellow Republicans and predicted that the party soon will recover from his loss.

“I think we’ve had a good record of stewardship,” Bush said at the New Republican Leadership Dinner hosted by Senate Republican leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) in a private hall at Union Station.

“The idea that this party has seen its demise . . . that the party is out of here, I don’t believe it for one single minute,” he said.

Bush’s defeat by Democrat Bill Clinton ends 12 years of Republican rule at the White House and sparked a round of finger-pointing over who bears responsibility for the loss.

He urged party faithful not to fall into “the tendency, when there’s a defeat of this magnitude and this hurtfulness and of this enormity . . . to criticize, to find somebody to blame.”

Bush said he was confident Republicans will return to power in Washington and said there was nothing to be gained from “falling into this second-guessing trap.”

Bush basically has been in seclusion since his defeat, spending most of his time at Camp David, Md., or in the privacy of the White House.

The President said he had misgivings about attending “something like a wake.”

“I didn’t want to come here, but I’m sure glad I did,” said Bush in emotional remarks to several hundred people attending the dinner honoring him and new Republicans elected to the Senate.

“Don’t worry about the Bushes,” he said.

He was to depart today for a five-day vacation in Florida before returning to Washington for his last days in power and Clinton’s swearing-in Jan. 20.

Dole, in his introductory remarks, spoke emotionally of Bush, saying “no President was more committed to getting the job done.”

“Your place in history is secure . . . George Bush helped change the world and that’s very important to all of us,” Dole said as he fought to maintain his composure.

Vice President Dan Quayle looked back on the years he has spent in Washington as a member of Congress and in the nation’s second-highest office and thanked Bush “for what you have done for this great nation of ours.”

“We loved, respected and enjoyed working with you,” Quayle said in his tribute. “It’s been the best four years of my life.”

House Minority Leader Robert H. Michel (R-Ill.) lauded Quayle.

“You stood up to the best of them and . . . made us all proud that Dan Quayle was our vice president,” said Michel.

The senators presented Bush a bronze sculpture of a longhorn bull and Quayle a collapsible fishing rod.