If GOP Is Ripe for a Takeover, Will It Be Pat Robertson in the Promised Land?

Eighteen months ago, while driving from Washington to New York, Jeffrey Bell made a prediction about the 1988 presidential race. Bell, who today is the national coordinator of Rep. Jack Kemp’s campaign, had been studying 19th-Century U.S. political history, and he noted that the great “social issue” of slavery was not addressed at the presidential level until various economic problems had been resolved. Analogously, Bell thought, President Reagan has resolved many of the worst economic problems of the 1970s. So once again, he predicted, “social issues” would come to the fore: Abortion, school prayer and so on.

Now comes early and unexpected signs of strength in Marion G. (Pat) Robertson’s campaign for President: a straw-poll victory in Iowa (the same poll that was in earlier campaigns won by Jimmy Carter and George Bush), and maneuvering in Michigan that most now believe will hand Robertson an outright victory in that state’s January caucus unless he is blocked by a suit filed on behalf of Bush.

I telephoned Bell at Kemp’s campaign headquarters. It looked as though his old prediction might come true, I said, but the “wrong” candidate was reaping the benefit: Robertson, not Kemp (who came in fourth, behind Sen. Bob Dole and Bush in the Iowa straw poll).

“It’s not really that simple,” Bell said. “Kemp has also been the beneficiary of the evangelical upsurge.” He cited a right-to-life endorsement in Iowa and a probable second-place finish in Michigan. He said that, of all candidates in both parties, only Kemp and Robertson were “poised to take advantage of the Christian move into politics.”

Maybe. But Pat Robertson, who will formally launch his campaign Thursday, would seem to be the main beneficiary. “Many observers figured that the Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker scandal would demoralize Mr. Robertson’s following of evangelical Christians and cultural conservatives,” the Washington Post noted the other day.

Far from it, apparently. The television evangelist from Virginia Beach, Va., claims that he has signed up 3.3 million supporters. Robertson also claims to have raised $10 million for his campaign. He will refuse federal matching funds, which means that he is not covered by federal reporting requirements.

The conventional wisdom in Washington is that Robertson could act as a Republican “spoiler,” hurting Bush’s chances more than he is likely to help his own. He might even be a “kingmaker” at the Republican convention in New Orleans. But his chances of winning the nomination are negligible. Columnist George F. Will noted that Robertson has “a floor he cannot fall through, but also a low ceiling.” Dole adviser David Keene told me: “Robertson’s numbers in Iowa don’t mean much,” because the small turnout (there were 5,700 straw-poll participants) gives disproportionate weight to Robertson’s intense but small following.

Again, maybe. But one would have more confidence in the pundits today if they had earlier predicted that Robertson would do so well so soon. Robertson’s following is intense, but it remains to be seen whether it is small.

Harry Veryser, an economics professor at the University of Detroit who has been a key organizer of Robertson’s effort to date in Michigan, told me a month ago that a Robertson upset was coming in Iowa. Today he believes that Robertson may win the Iowa caucuses. George Bush could in any event be in real trouble.

Bell, Keene and Veryser all said the same thing: Bush’s organizers find it hard to motivate people to turn out for their man. His following is lukewarm, and party officeholders will not suffice to turn the tide for the vice president. What is so remarkable about the probable upset in Michigan is that the state’s caucus was deliberately organized by Republican Party regulars to benefit Bush, believing that it would be best to shield him from a primary. But Robertson’s people figured out the arcane rules, and now may take over the party leadership in the state.

Veryser believes that Bush could end up without a single Michigan delegate. Most of the press attention so far has focused on the Democratic race, with its diverting news of philandering and plagiarism. But the big story may be in the Republican Party, at last ripe for a takeover from the businessmen who have controlled it for so many decades.

Such a change is long overdue. Whereas Democrats aspire to run the country, the old Republican guard has aspired merely to run the party. Which is why they are so resentful of Pat Robertson and the unwashed hordes that he may bring with him into that party: people who have never seen the inside of a country club; people who (unlike the old guard) are interested in the issues, especially the social issues; people who used to vote Democratic. There could be more of them than we think. And there could be more Pat Robertson supporters than we think.