Final GOP Planks Call Democrats’ Soviet Views ‘Naive’

The Republican Party platform committee concluded its work Friday by adopting foreign policy and defense planks that are staunchly conservative, that praise the “experience” of their presidential candidate, Vice President George Bush, and lash out at the Democrats as taking a “naive” approach to the Soviet Union and other alleged threats to the nation’s security.

The full 30,000-word platform will be considered by the Republican convention here Tuesday and Nebraska Gov. Kay A. Orr, platform committee chairman, said she expects it to be adopted without any floor fights.

The foreign policy plank, taking a phrase from Democrat Thomas Jefferson, declares that under President Reagan the United States “has become in fact, what it has always been in principle, the last best hope of mankind on earth.” One committee member, Mark Spengler of Hawaii, said he feared such language might be misunderstood as an arrogant boast, but the vast majority of his colleagues disagreed.

Defends Jeffersonian Language

“Where would the world be without the United States--deep in a morass of godless, materialistic societies,” said Frank Graves of Minnesota. “We’re the bulwark in the world against the predatory policies of the Soviet Union.”

The 36-page plank deals with a plethora of issues ranging from absolute opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state to the use of broadcast satellites to advance the efforts of the Voice of America. The Reagan Administration is given credit for a host of foreign policy triumphs ranging from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty to a pending settlement of the Iran-Iraq war.

The Sandinista government in Nicaragua is excoriated in some detail and the platform advocates continued support for the Nicaraguan Contras, a position directly at odds with that of Democratic presidential candidate Michael S. Dukakis.

The South African government’s apartheid policy is condemned as “morally repugnant,” but in distinct contrast to the Democratic platform the Republican document argues against economic sanctions.

Acknowledges ‘New Challenges’

The platform acknowledges that there are “new challenges” to dealing with the Soviet Union under Mikhail S. Gorbachev, but it also declares that there are “enduring realities,” including Soviet support for “communist guerrillas and governments throughout the Third World.”

The sentiments of the committee on this subject were perhaps best expressed by delegate Jim Summers of Washington state who proclaimed: “The Russian bear has not changed--they’ve just given him a 3-piece suit and a pair of Gucci loafers.”

The conservative tenor of the 106-member committee was reflected in the fact that abortion, condemned at length in other parts of the platform, was also injected in a section on children’s health in the Third World: “We commend the Reagan-Bush Administration for its courageous defense of human life in population programs around the world. We support its refusal to fund international organizations involved in abortion.”

The defense plank calls for rapid deployment of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which Dukakis vigorously opposes. “It has brought the Soviets back to the bargaining table,” the platform declares of the space-based anti-ballistic missile program popularly known as “Star Wars.”

Plank Chastises Dukakis

The plank also specifically chastises Dukakis for preventing Massachusetts from participating in the Ground Wave Emergency Network, a communication system designed to transmit warnings or presidential orders to the Strategic Air Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command if the country were under nuclear attack.

The committee also adopted an overview statement that was designed to serve as an “overarching bridge” between the foreign policy and defense planks, according to its draftsman, former Texas Sen. John Tower, who is serving as a special adviser to Bush on these issues. “Providing for the long-term security of the nation is the most important role of the U.S. government,” the statement declares.

The initial draft did not specifically mention SDI, which led to questions of whether Bush was in any way attempting to distance himself from the multibillion dollar program. Tower emphatically denied this, saying Bush “strongly favors SDI,” and it is specifically referred to in the final draft of the national security statement.

At a concluding press conference, Gov. Orr declared that the Republicans dealt with 125 issues that do not appear in the Democratic platform.

“There’s no one who can say that George Bush and the Republican Party hasn’t established its program,” proclaimed New Hampshire Gov. John H. Sununu, Bush’s point man on the platform committee. But one note of discord arose at the news conference. Advocates of more assistance to victims of AIDS asserted that the Reagan Administration had spent less than half as much money to deal with the disease than the platform states.

“This Administration has presided over the death of 45,000 Americans,” yelled Marc Kostopoulos, a Los Angeles AIDS activist who said he came here to protest Republican policies on the issue.