Moderates May Now Feel Contra Aid Heat

Last week House Speaker Jim Wright’s humanitarian aid package for the Nicaraguan Contras was narrowly defeated by an odd alliance of Republicans who regard humanitarian aid as inadequate and liberal Democrats who regard any aid to the Contras as unacceptable. Coming in the wake of the House’s rejection of President Reagan’s Contra aid package in February, the unexpected defeat of the Democratic alternative leaves U.S. policy in a colossal state of confusion. The one certainty is that Contra aid will be back before Congress again, probably soon.

Since 1983 the House has voted on Contra aid more than two dozen times, with each side chalking up about half the victories. Why can’t Congress resolve this issue once and for all? The House is stalemated because it is divided into three distinct blocs, not one of which commands a majority.

Virtually all Republicans and conservative Democrats from the Deep South have invariably supported military aid to the Contras in whatever amounts the Reagan Administration requested. Liberal Democrats and a few renegade liberal Republicans have invariably opposed all Contra aid. A few dozen moderates, mostly Democrats from Southern border states, favor some Contra aid as a way of pressuring the Sandinistas to make concessions, but they are reluctant to sign on to the Administration’s open-ended proxy war.

The moderates hold the balance of power. Congress has been unable to dispose of the Contra aid issue because neither the pro-Contra nor the anti-Contra bloc has been able to build an enduring coalition with the moderates. Both sides have been persistent suitors, fashioning their proposals and their rhetoric for maximum appeal, but the moderates have resisted clear commitment, switching partners just often enough to keep both sides in pursuit.

The moderate Democrats have always been fearful of the politics of Contra aid. Most of them come from areas of the country in which Ronald Reagan racked up huge majorities in 1980 and 1984. The traditional dominance of the Democratic Party in their districts has been gradually eroding, due in part to the clash between the non-interventionist sentiments of the national Democratic Party and the patriotic culture of the South. These Democrats run scared.

Lest their Republican opponents in the next election accuse them of being soft on communism, the moderates vote against Reagan’s Contra aid proposals only when they are assured of “political cover”--that is, when the Democratic leadership offers an alternative plan that they can support.

Over the past few months Wright has made a major effort to unite liberal and moderate Democrats into a permanent majority that could finally take control of Contra aid policy away from Reagan. The narrow defeat of his Contra aid request in February was the first fruit of that effort. But to secure the moderates’ support the Speaker had to promise to devise an alternative.

Once Reagan’s plan had been disposed of, the liberals and moderates began negotiating over what the alternative should contain. After tough negotiations, a consensus proposal was finally forged. Then, to Wright’s surprise and embarrassment, it was defeated on the House floor, leaving the moderates without their requisite political cover and jeopardizing the liberal-moderate alliance.

There were two reasons for the debacle. First, the leadership was so intent on mollifying the moderates that it did not give sufficient weight to the liberals’ concerns. When negotiations over the alternative bogged down, the leadership pressured the liberals to do most of the compromising. The result was a package that included direct aid to the Contras--something that the liberals had never before supported. The leadership calculated that the liberals would acquiesce and back the Democratic plan as the lesser of two evils, and, despite their misgivings, most of them did. But, based on similar votes in 1983 and 1985, Wright should have known that some liberals would not vote for Contra aid under any circumstances.

Despite the drama of a dozen liberals defecting from their leadership, Republicans still cast the vast majority of votes against the Democratic plan. The Contras pleaded that the plan was better than nothing, but the Republicans, taking their cue from Reagan, voted it down anyway. The Republicans chose to deprive the Contras of any aid over the next several months in order to improve the chances of winning military aid later. This is a strategy of political intimidation targeted on the Democratic moderates. By defeating the Democratic plan, the Republicans aimed to strip away the moderates’ political cover, thereby intimidating some of them into supporting the Administration in the next round of voting.

At stake in the House’s protracted war over Contra aid is control over the direction of U.S. policy toward Nicaragua. If Wright can hold together the shaky alliance of liberals and moderates, Washington’s financing of the Contra war will gradually come to an end, brightening the prospects for peace. But if the Republicans’ scare tactics frighten the moderates into supporting a resumption of military aid, Reagan’s war against Nicaragua will grind on.