Thanks for the info on the propulsion/speed question Ace/TJ. The other inquiry I had was for what usage the air capable Spruance's would have been designed for? (I went and re-read the page 1 info but that question was not covered.)
The designs can only really be evaluated in the context of the era. In the late 1970s the small carrier (Sea Control Ship / Vertical Support Ship) designs died in the face of political pressure to keep the number of flat-deck hulls down. As a result, the need for indigenous air cover over smaller groups (convoys and surface action groups) still existed, but there was no small carrier to fill the roll.
Meanwhile, even after the SCS/VSS programs had died, the Type-A (Support/Multimission) and Type-B (Fighter) VTOL programs were still ongoing (somewhat). The Type-B program had suffered a major setback with the failure of the XFV-12. This failure however was mitigated by the fact that for most of the open-ocean missions, you don't need a dogfighter, you need an aircraft that can fly out and shoot down Tupolevs at long range. While this increased the number of missions that the Type-A airframe (At this point Grumman, Lockheed, and LTV were all proposing turbofan powered aircraft, while Bell-Boeing was showing off Tiltrotor technology, and would eventually win) would have to support, it didn't increase the size of the platform (anything that is flying several hundred nautical miles to launch Harpoons can do the same with Sparrows and AMRAAMs). The program died a slow death with the Lehman era buildup of the USN, and the eventual selection of the V-22 as the Type-A aircraft.
The Ghiradella design is something else entirely. While the Santa Fe, Adams & Rains (not re-rendered yet), and the DGV were all designed with shipyard input, the Ghiradella design was not. It was simply the effort of a Reserve commander to develop an American Invincible on a preexisting hull.
None of the above designs are related to the CSGN Mk 2 which was, as has been noted before, an attempt to develop a strategic platform capable of threatening anything within a 1000+ nmi range, while being very hard to kill without a swarm attack.