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Subject: Taking Credit, and Placing Blame;In Defeat, GOP Talks Of 'Betrayal' and '96<By
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 92 05:01:45 EST
Message-ID: <35.1992Nov5.050145@AmeriCast.com>

Taking Credit, and Placing Blame;In Defeat, GOP Talks Of 'Betray-
al' and '96<By E. J. Dionne Jr.<Washington Post Staff Writer<

Republicans emerged from President Bush's shattering defeat yes-
terday divided not only about the meaning and the cause of their
loss but even about whether losing the White House was really
such a bad thing for the GOP.

For a party that had come to see itself as the nation's natural
holder of executive power, Tuesday's voting was cause for both
recrimination and introspection. Bush's share of the presidential
vote was the party's lowest in 28 years, and exit polling showed
the Republican vote reduced to its hard core: the relatively
well-to-do and the religious conservatives.

Not all the news Tuesday was bleak for Republicans. They gained
at least seven seats in the House - an encouraging showing,
though far less than they had hoped to pick up in a reapportion-
ment year. They held their losses in the Senate to one that might
be canceled out, depending on the outcome of a Georgia runoff
election later this year.  Republican National Chairman Richard
N. Bond boasted that the party posted a net gain of nine state
legislatures, and that even in defeat Bush retained much of the
party's base in the South and the Rockies.

But the leadership void was palpable, and some Republicans im-
mediately moved to fill it.

Few did so more eagerly than Senate Republican leader Robert J.
Dole (Kan.). He claimed the mantle of spokesman for the 57 per-
cent of the electorate that voted either for Bush or independent
Ross Perot. Dole, who frequently has battled for more balanced
budgets against his party's tax-cutting wing, said he has a right
to "stake a claim" to Perot's constituency since he shares its
concerns over the deficit.

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Jack Kemp kept a low
profile, not wanting to seem ungracious to Bush. But Kemp plainly
wants to run for president in 1996 and would like to speak not
only for his party's conservative wing but also for moderates who
see the need to reach out and build a new majority coalition.

Sen. Phil Gramm (D-Tex.), another 1996 presidential possibility,
also refused to criticize the defeated president. But he said the
party was in danger of losing sight of the "only two fixed stars
in the political heavens . . . peace and prosperity." In this
election, he said, his party simply did not talk enough about the
economy.  The post-election recriminations among Republicans took
two forms: criticisms of the Bush campaign, and charges and coun-
tercharges among factions.

About the Bush campaign, few Republicans actually had much good
to say. Even Vice President Quayle conceded on ABC's "Good Morn-
ing America" that "Bill Clinton certainly ran a much better cam-
paign."

More significant for the long term were the first skirmishes over
the party's direction. Party moderates, and some conservatives,
already are moving to contain the power of the party's evangeli-
cal Christian wing and its leader, the religious broadcaster Pat
Robertson.

"We can't appeal to a narrow group of voters and merely attempt
to secure a base that . . . doesn't move us to a wider group of
voters who have their natural home in the Republican party," said
Steven I. Hofman, assistant secretary of labor for public af-
fairs. Labor Secretary Lynn M.  Martin is likely to strike that
theme if she seeks the Republican national chairmanship.

But Robertson, backed by the electoral statistics, boasted that
evangelicals have been Bush's most loyal constituency. "I don't
see how you can take them out of the Republican party and have
anything left," he said in an interview.

In fact, an exit poll by Voter Research & Surveys found that 28
percent of Bush's voters were white evangelicals or fundamental-
ists, compared with 9 percent of Clinton's and 14 percent of
Perot's.

Fully 27 percent of Bush voters listed "family values" as a vot-
ing issue, compared with 8 percent of Clinton's and 9 percent of
Perot's.

"Blaming the evangelicals for this defeat is like blaming the
sinking of the Titanic on a waiter who dropped some dishes," said
Christian Coalition Executive Director Ralph Reed..<

In the meantime, a long list of conservatives already have blamed
Bush for abandoning conservative economic principles, notably by
raising taxes. Paul Weyrich, president of the conservative Free
Congress Foundation, yesterday added Bush's handling of the Los
Angeles riots to the causes of his defeat. Weyrich said Bush
wasn't tough enough.

The party's moderate wing, on the other hand, said the GOP moved
too far right in its platform and at its convention. "The ulti-
mate betrayal of Bush will be to say he wasn't conservative
enough," said former congressman Peter Smith, president of the
moderate Ripon Society. "It was, in fact, the embracing of this
platform at the convention that sealed the president's doom."

Beyond the left-right battles lurked an anxiety among Republicans
that Bush's troubles were rooted in a conservative intellectual
malaise. "For the last six years, we've been much less certain of
our ground, of our principles, of our North Star," said former
education secretary William J. Bennett, another possible 1996
candidate.

Bennett is part of a group of younger conservatives who want to
promote new policy approaches and more aggressive political
outreach programs.  Rep. Vin Weber (R-Minn.) said he and his al-
lies have secured pledges of financial and political support for
an organization that will do both intellectual and organizing
work.

Weber said the new group will be modeled after Americans for
Democratic Action, formed in the 1940s to promote the liberal
agenda while separating liberalism from any association with com-
munism.

Weber, a Kemp ally, said "the need for a counterpart organization
of conservatives became more urgent" with the emergence of Pa-
trick J. Buchanan and the Christian Right as major players in
1992 Republican politics. The idea will be to define not only
what conservatism is, but also what it shouldn't be.

Weber wants to enlist Bennett, William Kristol, Vice President
Quayle's chief of staff, and R. Spencer Abraham, a Quayle staff
alumnus who has run the National Republican Congressional Commit-
tee, in the cause. Bennett said he is sympathetic to Weber's
idea, but is not sure what form it should take.<

The one organizational certainty is a battle for the Republican
chairmanship, since Bond has announced that he is stepping down.

The list of potential candidates grows daily and includes Martin,
Bennett, Weber, Abraham, Kristol, former Delaware Gov. Pierre S.
"Pete" du Pont IV, Mississippi Republican National Committeeman
Haley Barbour, former Colorado state chairman Howard H.  "Bo"
Callaway, Education Secretary Lamar Alexander and political
operative Charles Black.

Bennett, for one, took a philosophical view of his party's loss,
arguing that Republicans actually could profit from a spell out
of power. "We've been in for 12 years," he said. "We've been run-
ning out of steam."<02:27 11-05C9999-----

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.  This story is from the
Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar-
chived or redistributed.

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