Hard-Line Principles vs. Compromises : Rival GOP Camps Clash in Bitter Policy Disputes

On the eve of fundamental policy decisions on taxes and U.S.-Soviet relations, Ronald Reagan’s Administration finds itself fractured by increasingly bitter divisions between the Republican Party’s rival camps: the ideological conservatives who would rather be right than win and the moderates who counsel partial victories through compromise.

Nothing has so dramatized the split as the double debacle involving Supreme Court nominee Robert H. Bork’s rejection by the Senate and the subsequent, quickly aborted nomination of Douglas H. Ginsburg.

Administration hard-liners, accusing the moderates of failing to wage an all-out campaign for Bork, obtained Reagan’s support for Ginsburg before his past could be thoroughly checked. Ginsburg’s withdrawal from consideration Saturday after admitting he had used marijuana left the conservatives mortified--and the moderates, who had opposed Ginsburg’s nomination in the first place, seething.

One source said that White House Chief of Staff Howard H. Baker Jr.--the Administration’s leading moderate--was so upset about Reagan’s selection of Ginsburg that he briefly entertained the possibility of quitting. Baker was “mad as hell,” said a friend at week’s end, “but he’s calmed down.”

White House Communications Director Thomas C. Griscom, a Baker ally, said the chief of staff never thought about quitting and insisted: “It’s less of a battle here than people outside tend to make it. Sen. Baker’s ability to get stuff done is more than people think.”

But Baker’s departure would be no loss to conservative ideologues inside the government and out. Patrick J. Buchanan, Reagan’s former communications director and an outspoken advocate of the hard-line approach, said he has felt a “general dissatisfaction” with the Administration’s “disinclination to fight” ever since Baker became chief of staff early this year.

The White House staff, Buchanan said, has failed to push Congress hard enough not only on Bork but also on other issues, including aid for Nicaragua’s rebels. Taxes and U.S.-Soviet relations, he said, will provide litmus tests of Baker’s future performance.

He predicted a “firestorm” of protest if Reagan yields to pressure and approves a tax increase as part of the deficit-reduction package being negotiated by Administration and congressional leaders.

Look to Summit

Likewise, Buchanan said, conservatives will howl if the President compromises his Strategic Defense Initiative, the space-based anti-missile system commonly known as “Star Wars,” during next month’s summit with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

Reagan does continue to talk like the leader conservatives thought they had helped elect. During a recent White House meeting, for example, the President reportedly told conservative Republican senators that on the great issues, “It’s better to lose than to compromise your integrity.”

But the balance among Administration officials seems to be tipping toward moderation. The pragmatists predominate in Baker’s White House, where the conservative flame is still carried by Gary Bauer, Reagan’s assistant for policy development; T. Kenneth Cribb Jr., his assistant for domestic affairs; Budget Director James C. Miller III, and the entire speech-writing staff under Anthony Dolan.

Outside the White House, moderates have recently replaced conservatives in a number of key posts: Vernon A. Walters for Jeane J. Kirkpatrick as U.N. ambassador; Frank C. Carlucci for John M. Poindexter as Reagan’s national security adviser, and, just last week, the nomination of Carlucci to replace outgoing Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger.

Meese’s Kindred Spirits

The leading conservative still in the Cabinet is Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, who championed Ginsburg’s ill-fated nomination to the Supreme Court. He has kindred spirits in Education Secretary William J. Bennett and Interior Secretary Donald P. Hodel.

The ranking Cabinet moderates are Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Treasury Secretary James A. Baker III.

The struggle for Reagan’s heart and mind on tax and budget policy pits Treasury Secretary Baker against Budget Director Miller. Baker reportedly refused to travel overseas to an international finance ministers’ meeting during the budget negotiations with Congress, lest Miller be left in charge.

The battle lines over “Star Wars” are not so clear in the absence of Weinberger, one of the Administration’s leading proponents of SDI. “Weinberger’s leaving has set off a genuine five-alarm warning” in the conservative camp, Buchanan said.

The conservatives’ leading bugaboo in the Administration is Howard Baker, whom they regard as miscast as chief of staff. Although Baker sees compromise as necessary if Reagan is to get even partial victories from the Democratic Congress, the President’s right-wing supporters equate compromise with weakness.

“His reluctance to do battle has caused unnecessary defeats for the President,” declared a senior Reagan aide who declined to be identified. “A lot of my friends and I feel that’s what happened with Bork. We were too slow on the draw and never handed back to the other side as good as we got.”

Even some moderates agree that Baker is unsuited for his present role.

“It’s an inherent mismatch,” said a former member of the senior White House staff, “between his experience and the needs of the job--to tiptoe every day through a mine field, recognizing that any step could literally blow up in your face. He is not a chief of staff, and he should not be.”

Moderates Also Criticize

Moderates fault Baker for failing to shield Reagan from his ideological soul mates, the hard-line conservatives whom they hold responsible for many of the President’s mistakes.

Baker has failed, said the former senior White House staff member, to do what was done during the Administration’s first term--”to guide and protect the President. . . . There was always that will to protect him, from people and certain impulses.”

Nowhere has the clash between the two camps been more public--and more bitter--as in the stumbling effort to fill the vacant Supreme Court seat. It was a battle that pitted Baker against Meese, the only remaining member of Reagan’s inner circle who was among the conservative Californians who came to Washington with him in 1981.

Bork was the candidate of the right wing. When his nomination appeared to be in trouble in the Senate, the self-described “movement conservatives” who work for Meese at the Justice Department urged an aggressive campaign on behalf of the nominee.

One confrontational proposal called on White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater to offer reporters a daily example of a “big lie” being circulated by Bork’s critics. Another involved publicly challenging the right of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), a Bork opponent, to lecture Bork on the importance of women’s rights.

Baker’s White House rejected both courses.

After Bork’s defeat, Baker’s candidate for the nomination was Anthony M. Kennedy, a federal appeals judge from Sacramento, who he insisted could win quick Senate confirmation in the wake of the divisive battle for Bork. Meese championed Ginsburg, a 41-year-old federal appeals judge from the District of Columbia about whom little was known.

A Baker adviser who asked not to be identified said the chief of staff feared that nominating Ginsburg would touch off another confirmation battle with the Senate that would cost Reagan political capital on other issues. “When Baker interviewed Ginsburg,” he said, “all kinds of alarm bells went off.”

Baker tried to short-circuit Administration conservatives. When he met with Senate Republicans to review possible nominees, he excluded Assistant Atty. Gen. John R. Bolton, a movement conservative who heads the Justice Department’s Office of Legislative Affairs.

But then Baker made what the former senior White House aide called a tactical error. He let Meese attend the key meeting with Reagan on the nomination, and other sources said Meese played on Reagan’s conservative impulses to win his support for Ginsburg.

The other major ideological battles on the immediate horizon involve taxes and the Strategic Defense Initiative.

‘The Final Capitulation’

If Reagan agrees to a budget package that includes a tax increase, said a senior Reagan aide who declined to be identified, “that would be the final capitulation of the Reagan presidency. And, second, we’re watching the relationship with the Soviets and whether we’re going to deploy SDI that can protect American cities. If there’s any sign of the President bargaining away SDI or agreeing not to deploy, that would ignite a firestorm.”

A tax increase, which Reagan has resisted for most of his presidency, is being sought by congressional Democrats as part of a deficit-reduction plan designed to mollify Wall Street after the Oct. 19 stock market crash. Howard Baker and James Baker persuaded Reagan to make a statement leaving the door open to a tax increase as part of a package.

“They had to drag the President kicking and screaming down that road,” conceded an adviser to Howard Baker.

Staff writer Ronald J. Ostrow also contributed to this story.