(FORTUNE Magazine) – Here's a vernal ritual you know well: The major parties finish tidying up their presidential nominations and start preparing for the general election. Down in a Texas office building, stirrings of discontent are heard. Ross Perot begins to raise questions, says the two parties are not addressing his supporters' concerns. He toys with running for President himself. The press feeds the speculation.

Here's another spring ritual: The primaries finished, the commentators and the experts begin their search for a shorthand to understand the fall campaign. Almost simultaneously they seize on a pattern from the recent past, slap it like a template onto the present, and--presto!--the conventional wisdom is born.

You can see it happening right now on your television and on the op-ed page of your newspaper. It goes like this: That Ross, he can't help himself. He's going to run for president. And as a result, a weak incumbent, elected four years ago with only 43% of the vote, is about to get a big break--the chance to win the White House again without winning a majority. In short: Perot reelects Clinton.

Not so fast. The very foundation of that conventional wisdom--the fact that it happened before, in 1992--could well be the very reason it's wrong in 1996. The theory is based on the notion that the big sucking sound you heard four Novembers ago was the movement of Republicans away from George Bush's stodgy camp into Ross Perot's political camp meeting. Exit surveys bolster that view; Perot's supporters were more likely to be Republicans than Democrats.

But that's not going to happen again. Fast-forward to November and see why. Perot's in the race, complaining about NAFTA, droning on about campaign finance, the mess in Washington, the crazy aunt in the basement (you know her as the federal budget deficit). The whole shtick can be distilled to a single message: a pox on both your houses. Only this time, the vox pox is going to infiltrate the Democrats' house more than the Republicans'.

It's easy to see why the Democrats who sided with Perot last time cling to him like Velcro. If you were uneasy about Bill Clinton in 1992, when you hardly knew him, then you're downright hostile in 1996. Why? One word: Hillarywhitewatertravelgategaysinthemilitary. The Perot Democrats are more likely to believe Elvis is running a B&B in Carmel than to buy Clinton's argument that things are better. No, these die-hard skeptics will stick with Ross and his traveling salvation show.

But the Perot Republicans are a different matter. They bolted from their 1992 nominee in large measure because George Bush was the very model of the elitist: Born (very likely in striped pajamas) to a family steeped in the finer points of tennis and golf. Educated at Yale (where he found comfort in the evil embrace of Skull and Bones). Trained in the nefarious arts of the CIA (where he learned tricks he would later apply to sabotaging Ross's daughter's wedding). But this time the GOP is nominating a poor boy from Russell, Kansas. A war hero (and disabled veteran). A graduate of Washburn University (whose basketball rivals are Emporia and Central Missouri State, not Brown and Princeton). A certified member of the striving class (whose father went to work in pressed overalls, not in J. Press).

This November, Dole will be far more attractive to the Perot Republicans than Bush ever was. Already he's nudged nearer to Ross's renegades. Though he supported NAFTA, Dole this winter began to blame Clinton for last year's peso crash--and pledged to use levers within NAFTA to get tougher with Mexico. Though he's been in Congress for more than a third of a century, he's embraced the Contract with America, including the term limits close to every Perotista's heart. The rhythms of the fall campaign will push Dole closer to 1035 North Maple Street, his boyhood prairie home, even as they reinforce Clinton as the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

And so while Perot Democrats may go off the cliff one more time, I'm arguing that Perot Republicans are going to return to their true home. The very fact they voted for Perot before makes it far less likely they'll do so again, since they know the consequence was the election of Bill Clinton. Instead, they'll vote for Bob Dole--and quite possibly hand him the White House.

So let the conventional wisdom be damned. Republican strategists brainstorming for a bumper sticker for the autumn wars need look no further than that old three-word standby: Run, Ross, run.

David Shribman is Washington bureau chief for the Boston Globe and a Pulitzer Prize--winning political reporter.