By now, the Republican conundrum is painfully familiar: the country as a whole is solidly for abortion rights. Self-identified Republican voters are split, and most rank the issue far down their list of priorities. But anti-abortion forces dominate GOP primaries, and their grip is as strong as ever, maybe stronger. While Bob Dole and Jack Kemp – pro-life but committed to the big tent – represent the party this year, they don’t represent the mood of the convention on abortion. In San Diego, anyway, the Christian right is comfortably in charge. These are Republican delegates, remember, who feel so intensely about their cause that ““tolerance’’ has actually become a dirty word to a majority of them.
Look at it this way: the Republican governors of California, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Massachusetts, to name just a few big states, are on the fringes of their own party’s convention, either kept off the podium altogether or told they cannot express their pro-choice views when they do speak. They may be conservatives in every other way, but this one issue marginalizes them.
The GOP has created a situation in which many of its major electoral leaders – the ones in closest touch with large blocs of voters – are effectively barred from national office. ““If you look at the statehouses, the people getting elected are not the extremists,’’ says Gov. Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey, citing Bill Weld of Massachusetts and Pete Wilson of California, among others. ““Those who say you have to be in lock step – that’s not my party.''
But it is her party, and Whitman, Colin Powell and other potential pro-choice candidates of the future must confront the now undeniable fact that the Republican candidates most likely to be elected president are among the least likely to be nominated, and vice versa. More immediately, at the very moment when Bill Clinton is deftly moving to the center on some of the GOP’s favorite issues – crime, family values, devolution of power to the states – the Republicans best positioned to counter Clinton’s larceny strategy are handcuffed by their own party on a non-bread-and-butter issue. It doesn’t take a Dick Morris to figure out that unless this changes, the Republican Party will never achieve the majority status it covets.
But try telling that to the delegates. This is now the fifth nominating convention in which the GOP has applied an anti-abortion litmus test. Ronald Reagan signed an abortion-rights law as governor of California, then changed his position in time for his presidential campaigns. George Bush was such a supporter of family planning as a congressman that he was called ““Rubbers,’’ but by the 1980s had flip-flopped. Bob Dole is pro-life but has gone back and forth so many times on platform language and planks that he has raised basic questions about his leadership. If he can’t stand up to a Phyllis Schlafly, how would he handle a Saddam Hussein?
Now Dole is trying hard to showcase a party that is peaceful and relatively moderate, especially compared with the scary ““culture war’’ karma coming out of the 1992 convention in Houston. He may succeed in image terms: each evening has been structured to appear mainstream. But substantively, this is the most conservative platform and group of delegates in the 140-year history of the Republican Party.
Maybe ““conservative’’ isn’t the right word. Perhaps ““revolutionary’’ (Newt Gingrich’s term) is more appropriate. The Bill of Rights consists of 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution; this year’s GOP platform framers propose no fewer than seven constitutional amendments – on a balanced budget, school prayer, victims’ rights, flag burning, term limits, barring citizenship for children of illegal aliens and, of course, abortion.
Among Dole’s favorite words is ““whatever’’ – and it’s one he no doubt applies to the platform. No president ever bothers with one after the election. But platforms do have symbolic importance. Sen. Olympia Snowe, who’s pro-choice, points out that the platform’s abortion ban fails to include exceptions in the cases of rape and incest. ““I mentioned that to Bob. I said, “Jeez, this doesn’t even reflect your view.’ He kind of shrugged,’’ she says. After playing a role in previous conventions, Snowe, one of only three GOP women in the Senate, has been given no chance to speak at all this year. Too moderate.
And too polite. Dole knows that he can play on the good sportsmanship of the moderates, who he correctly predicted would get with the program. While the religious right organizes in churches and builds fat mailing lists, the moderates make high-minded arguments on the op-ed page of The New York Times. It’s no contest. The meek shall not inherit the party.
Consider Whitman. As a teenager from a prominent Republican family, she watched as Goldwaterites heckled her hero Nelson Rockefeller at the 1964 convention in San Francisco (““One of our delegates stood on the chair and spit at him,’’ she recalls). Whitman acknowledges that Rockefeller sought a confrontation as a way of galvanizing party moderates to action. But Whitman is simply too well mannered to break any political china. While a little Rockefeller-style defiance in San Diego might help Whitman build a movement and advance her own presidential chances for 2000, she’s not likely to try it.
Bill Weld is the best hope, however faint, for a little pro-choice action in San Diego. Weld, who’s now seeking the Senate seat held by John Kerry, can be puckish. He has already staged a mini protest by declining his assignment to speak about the economy. It’s a talk on tolerance or nothing, he says. But actually storming out in anger would be unthinkable.
The same cannot be said for Pat Buchanan (whose sister and campaign manager Bay declared herself ““very pleased’’ by the platform) and the rest of the social-conservative crowd. They’ve got not only the delegate votes on abortion but the passion to disrupt the festivities if necessary. Dole knew this and greased their squeakier wheels.
Part of the moderates’ problem lies in the very nature of moderation. The banner of ““tolerance’’ all but precludes banners; to march and shout for moderation is almost a contradiction in terms. Even when he was threatening a convention-floor debate over abortion (and bringing at least a procedural motion to a vote was well within the moderates’ grasp), Weld kept referring to it as a ““floor discussion’’ – as if fighting over tolerance would undermine it.
The intensity that’s required for grassroots organizing usually takes a zeal that most moderates still lack. They have bonded more than in 1992, when Weld was essentially out there alone. ““I feel a lot less lonesome because of Christie and Pete,’’ Weld says. But there are few signs of true movement-building. The three have formed a little-known PAC called the Committee for Responsible Government and raised at least a million dollars to give to pro-choice Republicans. While that’s a start, it won’t be confused with the $25 million-a-year, 1.8 million-member Christian Coalition any time soon.
Perhaps the biggest challenge for the pro-choice candidates is that there isn’t that much that divides them from other Republicans. Because they agree so strongly with GOP orthodoxy on other issues – especially cutting taxes – the building blocks of an insurgency are not in place. The only real way to change the Republican Party is for Whitman or Powell or some other pro-choice candidate to run for president in 2000. Wilson and Sen. Arlen Specter tried it this year and fizzled, but someday soon a compelling moderate Republican will take a leaf from the successes of centrist Democrats and enter a few primaries. Then we’ll find out if the Republicans can finally pitch that big tent they like to talk about.
