Kean Calls for GOP Effort to Fight Social Ills

With Ronald Reagan having made his appearance and ridden off into the sunset, Republicans heard two sharply divergent depictions of the future of their party Tuesday night.

The first came from the official keynote speaker, New Jersey Gov. Thomas H. Kean, who opened the George Bush part of the GOP convention with a call for the Republican Party to use “Reagan-Bush principles” to combat social ills that the Reagan Administration has been widely accused of ignoring.

“We don’t want to repeal the Reagan revolution--far from it,” Kean said, but “today America demands a new vision,” one that includes stronger protection of the environment, a battle against racism and a fight for better schools.

The second came from one of Vice President Bush’s defeated rivals for the presidential nomination, religious broadcaster Pat Robertson, who brought cheers from the delegates with a blistering recitation of conservative principles, including calls for school prayer, an end to abortion and a political party “not ashamed” to “mention . . . the name of God.”

The contrast between Kean and Robertson underlined the struggle that continues for the soul of the GOP even as the party tries to unite behind Bush’s candidacy.

Earlier, the convention whipped through approval of the party platform and heard a series of speeches bashing Democratic presidential nominee Michael S. Dukakis on issues from the economy to foreign policy. California Gov. George Deukmejian joined the hit parade, attacking Dukakis’ record on law and order issues, and former U.N. Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick attacked Dukakis’ foreign policy views.

Appeals for Party Unity

At the end of the evening, former President Gerald R. Ford made an appeal for party unity. Despite minute-by-minute planning by convention managers, however, the Republicans fell nearly half an hour behind their schedule by the time Kean’s speech concluded, pushing Ford’s speech out of prime time on the East Coast.

One of the few major Republican officeholders to have demonstrated substantial appeal to blacks and other minority voters, Kean (pronounced Cane), was personally chosen by Bush to emphasize his theme that Republicans will practice the “politics of inclusion.”

As the party of Abraham Lincoln, he said, Republicans “must reach out” to the “ill-schooled, ill-trained or ill-housed.”

“Republicans will make it clear--we will search out bigotry and racism--we will drag it into the sunshine of understanding and make it wither and die.”

In addition to increased emphasis on civil rights, Kean called for greater government efforts to improve education and to clean up the environment. At several points, Kean’s speech closely resembled Dukakis’ language.

Pledge Virtually a Replica

“This election is not about the past, but the future,” he said, and he pledged that Republicans would not “concede one single vote anywhere,” virtually a replica of Dukakis’ oft-repeated pledge not to “concede one single state” to the Republicans.

He also said Republicans would deliver “good jobs with high wages,” a close cousin to Dukakis’ familiar phrase: “good jobs at good wages.”

Robertson offered a starkly different set of priorities.

Where Kean emphasized civil rights, Robertson attacked the Democrats for offering a society “where disease carriers are protected and the healthy are placed at great risk,” an allusion to proposals, endorsed by Bush, to prohibit discrimination against those infected with the AIDS virus.

Where Kean talked of efforts by Republican governors at educational reform, Robertson attacked teachers unions and called for “resolve that the children of our country will once again be allowed to pray to God in the classrooms of America.”

Difference on Abortion

Where Kean was picketed by conservative delegates angry at his pro-choice position on abortion, Robertson drew thundering cheers by calling for Republicans to strive for a nation “where the unborn child is safe in his mother’s womb.”

And where Kean closed his speech quoting a song, “The House I Live In,” that was written by two blacklisted composers during the 1950s and became a symbol of opposition to McCarthyism, Robertson attacked Dukakis for being “a card-carrying member of the ACLU.”

Kean’s task was to persuade the audience outside the convention hall that Republicans are sincere about reaching beyond their traditional base of white, Protestant prosperity, a job that may have been complicated by the image of the audience inside the hall.

About two-thirds of the GOP delegates are white Protestants, more than two-thirds of them male and almost three-quarters with incomes greater than $50,000 a year. The convention has fewer minorities, fewer women and fewer Jews among its delegates than the one that nominated Ronald Reagan four years ago, and by any measure is far less diverse than the Democratic National Convention that met in Atlanta last month.

King’s Widow Showcased

Perhaps to mitigate that problem, the GOP prominently showcased Coretta Scott King, widow of the late civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., seating her next to Barbara Bush in the Bush family box on the convention floor.

Nonetheless, as Robertson’s speech indicated, some of the issues Kean emphasized remain controversial within the party.

To avoid that controversy, the party platform, which covered most other issues in copious detail, devoted only three brief paragraphs to civil rights, one of which pledged opposition to affirmative action plans that use “quotas . . . the most insidious form of reverse discrimination against the innocent.”

Delegates approved the more than 30,000-word platform unanimously Tuesday morning.

Before describing his vision of the Republican future, Kean took a few whacks at the other side, joining the GOP chorus that has accused Dukakis of trying to hide his true views from the voters.

‘Adds Up to More Taxes’

The Democrats, Kean charged, “believe Washington should manage dreams for all Americans” and their platform “adds up to more taxes.” On foreign policy, he said, “they may try to talk like Dirty Harry, but they will still act like Pee-wee Herman.”

Attacks on the Democrats were a consistent theme throughout the evening and they fell into a repeated pattern. Speaker after speaker charged that the Democrats were hiding their true views to avoid letting voters know how liberal they are. Several speakers also tried to tie Dukakis to the more controversial positions of the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

Ford, for example, referred in his prepared text to the Democrats’ “three standard-bearers.” And Kirkpatrick accused Dukakis of being silent about Jackson’s controversial foreign policy views.

A former Democrat who four years ago brought the Republican convention in Dallas to its feet with an attack on the “blame America first” policy of the “San Francisco Democrats,” Kirkpatrick on Tuesday attacked the “Dukakis Democrats” for espousing “collectivism in domestic affairs, weakness in defense and confusion about America’s role in the world.”

Staff writer Henry Weinstein contributed to this story.