Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.news From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Bennett eyes GOP leadership panel Date: Tue, 17 Nov 92 15:07:56 EST Message-ID: \SE A \HD Bennett eyes GOP leadership panel \SH Party's stance to be redefined \BY Ralph Z. Hallow \CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES While Republicans squabble over their next national party chairman, William Bennett yesterday talked of forming a Republican Leadership Council to advance conservative ideas and, perhaps, his own run at the presidency in 1996. "The clear mandate for an RLC is to remind people who we were as a party - the neo-Reaganites," Mr. Bennett said at a luncheon with editors and reporters of The Washington Times. "Or call us the progressive center of the party." Appearing more relaxed than at any time in his recent political career, the former Bush administration drug czar said he might join Housing Secretary Jack Kemp, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and retiring Minnesota Rep. Vin Weber in forming the new organization. All are conservatives regarded as possible presidential contenders or are allied with a potential aspirant. Conspicuously absent is Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas, a leading GOP conservative who also has acknowledged his interest in running for the presidency. Mr. Gramm has his own forum, however, as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Some Republicans see the RLC as an effort to wrest control of the party from religious fundamentalists led by Pat Robertson and from Pat Buchanan's "neo-isolationist" wing. "I don't see it that way at all," Mr. Bennett said. "Pat Robertson isn't going to take over the party. He's going to get a lot of people working to make inroads, which is fine." Besides, he observed wryly, "our public policy is not suffering from an oversupply of Christian values at the moment. Nor, certainly, are our TV, news media, books and schools." "It's good for people who have strong religious views to get into politics. The tendency almost always is that these views will be moderated by entrance into the political process," he said. Mr. Bennett, 49, dismissed the idea that the Republican convention in August presented too conservative an image. "It boosted us 10 points in the polls," he said, adding that President Bush's campaign failed in part because it didn't carry a coherent conservative message out of the convention. The Reagan administration education secretary disavowed any attachment to "big government" conservatism. He said the road back to the White House for Republicans is to take on the "whiners" in America who want too much from government. He said he would tell them: "I'm not your father; I can't fix your life. Fix your own life." By contrast, he said, "Bill Clinton goes in and says, 'I am your father and your brother and whatever else you want me to be.' " Mr. Bennett said the RLC could bring about "a better fusion of economic growth with cultural values, to show these are not two different things." He cited Mr. Kemp's favorite program, enterprise zones, which Mr. Bennett said "are fine, provided you understand you have to have law and order in that neighborhood or people won't come in. You have to have the work ethic in people's hearts." Asked why enterprise zones would be necessary if law and order and the work ethic were returned to the inner city, he said with a wink, "That's a good question." At one point, Mr. Bennett aligned himself - sometimes using humor - with the thrust but not all the tactics of his party's cultural conservatives. "A country where 900,000 people can buy the Madonna book for $50 a copy is not a country in a severe economic crisis - unless you say they're all rich Republicans," he said. "A country where that many people are buying the Madonna book for that much money has another kind of problem. "And if you have 50 bucks and are interested in sex, you've got a third kind of problem," he said. Mr. Bennett said the most serious problem facing the nation is not economic decline, deteriorating infrastructure or unresponsive government, but cultural decadence, moral disorientation and a realistic fear of crime. Saying crime should be the GOP's top issue, he argued, however, that conservatives put too much emphasis on capital punishment. He said the focus the public wants is on prisons and "swift and sure punishment." As director of Mr. Bush's Office of National Drug Control Policy, he said he used to talk with people "in the worst crime areas, which almost always were public housing. . . . They didn't say cops were racists. They'd say, 'We want more cops. Why can't we have the same number you have in Chevy Chase?' " Mr. Bennett said the Bush campaign's failure to make a tough, quick response to the riots in south-central Los Angeles "is where we lost the election - or it was the last chance we had to win it." Asked how a Republican president or candidate can talk sensibly about the crime issue without being viewed as a racist by the media and civil rights leaders, he said: "It's all right to be killed by the press. It's not terminal. Tell the truth, and if we're afraid of that kind of criticism, we're finished. "But in speaking up about crime, we are speaking up for victims who are overwhelmingly, disproportionately black," he said. He acknowledged that several prominent Republicans urged him to run this year for a U.S. Senate seat in North Carolina. But Mr. Bennett, known for his restless intellect, said he was not disappointed he hadn't run. "The problem is that I may have won, and there are other places I'd prefer to be, because of the way you spend your day there [in the Senate]," he said. This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM