A Divided American Right Searches for Reagan Heir

The American Right is used to knowing its own mind and knowing its leader.

But now, as the 1988 presidential campaign begins, conservatives lack an undisputed candidate to carry their banner, and that could mean trouble not just for the Right but for Republicans in general.

“This is the first time in any of our lifetimes that conservatives were not focused on the next person to take up our cause,” conservative activist Richard A. Viguerie said.

Going all the way back to support for Ohio Sen. Robert A. Taft in the 1940s and early 1950s, “it has been an unbroken line,” Viguerie said. “After Taft it was (Richard M.) Nixon and then it was (Barry) Goldwater and then Reagan. Conservatives always knew who their man was. Now we don’t. There is no obvious heir apparent.”

“We are anguished and disunited over the succession to President Reagan,” said former White House aide Patrick J. Buchanan, who came close to jumping into the race himself earlier this year.

Viguerie said that he intends to support Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.), who has announced his presidential candidacy, but Viguerie added: “Most of my friends are still on the sidelines. Nobody is turning them on.”

After wavering for several months, former Sen. Paul Laxalt (R-Nev.), a close friend of Reagan, said recently he is actively exploring a presidential candidacy. His entry would set up a three-way battle for conservative hearts and minds between Laxalt, Kemp and Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), who also plans to seek the presidency.

“Laxalt would have an enormous following,” said former U.S. Treasurer Angela (Bay) Buchanan Jackson, a leading California conservative and sister of Pat Buchanan. “But Kemp would have his supporters and so would Dole, so there would still be no one candidate who could unite conservatives the way Reagan did.”

The lack of unity on the Right is of more than passing interest to Republicans as they attempt to hang onto the White House.

Strongly anti-communist and intently focused on such issues as abortion, school prayer, pornography and crime, the Right made a winner out of the Republican Party in recent presidential elections when it joined with the GOP’s traditional base of economic conservatives.

“The Right gives the Republican Party idealism and energy,” says Sidney Blumenthal, whose new book, “The Rise of the Counter-Establishment,” describes how angry conservatives used computer mailing lists and the force of ideas to become players in Washington.

Traces Shift to 1968

In his 1984 book, “The Rise of the Right,” William A. Rusher, publisher of the National Review, reminded Republicans of the historic shift that took place in the electorate beginning in 1968.

That year, Rusher wrote, millions of “social conservatives” deserted the Democratic Party because they believed it had gone too far in pushing welfare programs and minority rights.

Nine million of them voted for the independent presidential candidacy of former Gov. George C. Wallace of Alabama. Others went for Republican nominee Nixon, who defeated Democratic nominee Hubert H. Humphrey.

After Wallace’s 1972 presidential candidacy ended when he was shot, the social conservatives went heavily for Nixon over former Sen. George S. McGovern. Then, in 1976, when the Republicans nominated President Gerald R. Ford, a traditional economic conservative, some of the social conservatives moved back to the Democrats and helped send “born-again” Christian Southerner Jimmy Carter to the White House.

But in 1980 and 1984, they voted enthusiastically for Republican Ronald Reagan, and Rusher warned in a recent interview: “If the Republicans ever let these people go again, they are right back in minority status as a party.”

The question of whether staunch conservatives will in fact desert the Republicans--or sit on their hands--in 1988 is the subject of some debate among political observers around the country.

William F. Buckley Jr., the nationally syndicated columnist and editor of the National Review, believes that the Right will not bolt the Republican Party.

‘Nowhere Else to Go’

“They have nowhere else to go,” Buckley said in an interview. “Yes, it is true that the Republicans cannot win without the Right, but the Republicans do not have to keep them ‘happy.’ I am reminded of the old college phrase: ‘You want to keep the alumni sullen but not mutinous.’ ”

But Howard Phillips, founder of the Conservative Caucus, a grass-roots lobbying organization, said: “I think it is very clear by now that the hopes of many conservatives, particularly those in the Religious Right, were not fulfilled by President Reagan.

“He had the chance to institutionalize these people as part of an enduring Republican coalition by defunding Planned Parenthood, which condones abortion, by doing more to restrict pornography and by appointing conservatives to top policy positions.

“But he didn’t do it. So a lot of conservatives are just going to stay out of politics in 1988 if no one rings their bell.”

Looking at the current field of 1988 GOP presidential candidates, the list for conservatives is pretty short.

Many on the Right applauded Kemp when he called for the resignation of Secretary of State George P. Shultz after Shultz met in January with Oliver Tambo, head of the African National Congress, the black group in South Africa that has called for the violent overthrow of the South African government.

Kemp Has Detractors

But Kemp also has his detractors.

Clayton Roberts, vice president of the National Right to Work Committee, a powerful conservative lobbying group, said that his organization was furious when Kemp supported legislation that would increase compulsory union membership.

And Phillips said: “Kemp hurt himself by supporting sanctions against South Africa in the early going last year. Still, a lot of us could live with him, yes.”

Phillips and others said that they were pleased when Dole took their social agenda to the Senate floor in 1982. Also, this year Dole took the opposite position from Kemp on the compulsory union issue, and he helped Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), a conservative favorite, oust Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) from the ranking Republican position on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

But while Rusher said that he would not rule out supporting Dole, he summed up the attitude of other conservatives interviewed when he described Dole as a “a professional politician . . . who is basically not a movement conservative.”

Should he decide to run, Laxalt’s strengths include his ties to Reagan, his stands on social issues and his outspoken opposition to the Panama Canal treaties, long a litmus test with the Right.

Critical of Laxalt

However, Phillips criticized Laxalt for “not providing the kind of leadership for conservatives in the last six years that we had hoped for, given his proximity to the White House.”

Most of the conservatives interviewed for this article were not enthusiastic about Vice President George Bush, whom Phillips described as “the candidate of the Wall Street wing of the Republican Party.”

There was also a noticeable lack of enthusiasm for other announced and potential GOP candidates--former Delaware Gov. Pierre S. (Pete) du Pont IV and former Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr.

None of the conservatives interviewed thought that Pat Robertson, the television evangelist, could win the Republican nomination.

“In my speaking appearances around the country, I meet a lot of Republicans who are nervous about the Religious Right,” Rusher said.

The Religious Right’s problems have been compounded, many conservatives said, by the sex scandal involving North Carolina television preacher Jim Bakker and the infighting it set off within the TV ministry movement.

Phillips, who describes himself as nonpartisan, said: “If there was a Democrat who was more socially conservative than the Republican in 1988, I think the social conservatives would go with the Democrat.”

Could Back Robb

Both Phillips and Viguerie said they could support former Virginia Gov. Charles S. Robb if Robb were the Democratic nominee and an “Establishment Republican” like Bush were his opponent.

So far Robb has declined to seek the Democratic nomination. And many political professionals doubt that Robb--who supports aid to the Nicaraguan contras , among other conservative positions--could do well in the Democratic nominating process.

For Phillips, the search for a new leader of the movement comes down to this: “I want somebody to look me in the eye and say ‘I’m the leader of the Free World and here’s why.’ Nobody has done that.”

Researcher Doug Conner contributed to this story.