Even Conservatives Are Abandoning Ship

A dozen or so conservative leaders met privately at a Washington hotel last week to discuss the future of their political movement. Edward Feulner of the Heritage Foundation was there. So were New Right strategist Paul Weyrich, several fund-raisers, two officials of the Reagan Administration and a few Capitol Hill aides.

Not surprisingly, the conversation turned to President Reagan and the Iran arms scandal. Forget Reagan, they agreed. The President’s a goner, his influence shattered forever. We’ve got to decide how to press our agenda without him. Only William Kristol, a top official of the Department of Education, dissented, insisting that Reagan should be defended.

Thus, the Iran scandal has achieved what Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, the 1981-82 recession and the Marines debacle in Lebanon couldn’t. It has caused the disintegration of the Reagan coalition, that blend of conservatives from fundamentalist Christians to libertarians that held together as the most unified single bloc in American politics for a decade. And even if the coalition is revived on an issue or two--aid to the Nicaraguan contras, say, or funding the Strategic Defense Initiative--as Reagan serves out his final two years in the White House, it won’t be the dominant political force anymore.

The matter can be put quite succinctly: Without Reagan the conservatives lack a popular leader, and without the conservatives Reagan lacks a broad ideological base. Both wind up losers, and the political balance of power tilts away from them. Sure, the conservatives are still sentimentally attached to Reagan, but he’s no longer the same rallying point. Worse, there’s no replacement in sight. Conservatives are fragmented on who should be the Republican presidential nominee in 1988.

The gravity of the split is only now dawning on Reagan and his allies. Last Tuesday, Secretary of Education William J. Bennett denounced conservatives for ingratitude and political stupidity in abandoning Reagan. “There is no conservative agenda without Ronald Reagan,” Bennett said. “He is the man who made whatever good has happened to this Administration happen, and people should be mindful of that.”

Patrick J. Buchanan, the White House communications director, is even more blunt. “There’s an old saying that the major failing of American conservatives is they don’t retrieve their wounded,” he said. “Now’s the time you take an inventory of your friends.”

Not too many friends are turning up, however. Human Events, the weekly conservative publication that Reagan reads faithfully, has only half-heartedly defended him on the Iran arms deal. Linda Chavez, a White House aide until last winter, published a column in the Washington Post denouncing Lt. Col. Oliver North, the ousted National Security Council official blamed for diverting profits from the Iranian arms sales to the contras; she said that he was not a “true conservative.” Bennett, who got Chavez her first job in the Administration, was so mad about this that he quickly spread the word that he was sorry he’d ever sponsored her.

Why are conservatives so wary of supporting Reagan in his moment of greatest need?

“Nobody believes in the issue, giving arms to Iran,” says Allan Ryskind, the editor of Human Events. “Nobody’s persuaded by the arguments. And while conservatives love the contras, they think that aiding them has now been jeopardized.” (Military aid was only narrowly approved by Congress this year, and the scandal over diverted funds makes renewal of aid less than likely.)

Another source of wariness by most conservatives was the firing of North.

“Was North scapegoated or did he deserve to be fired?” asks Jeffrey Bell, an adviser to Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.). “Until conservatives know that, they’ll be on hold. They love North.”

And though many conservatives may be inclined to stand with Reagan, they’re unsure where to do that. With new revelations in the Iran scandal occurring daily, “they don’t know what ground to stand on,” says Bell. Complains Howard Phillips of the Conservative Caucus: “The nature of the issue keeps changing.”

Finally, there are conservatives like Phillips who always regarded Reagan as too moderate for their taste. “We wish the best for him, but we’re going to focus more on the 1988 presidential race than on helping his cause,” Phillips says. “Reagan has turned over the substance of policy to people in fundamental disagreement with the policies he’s rhetorically espoused.”

Phillips is resistant to lobbying. His friend Buchanan pleaded with him over dinner last Wednesday to come to the President’s defense.

Afterwards, Phillips went on ABC-TV’s “Nightline” and trashed Reagan.