COLUMN RIGHT : Fools Rush In, Trip on Their Own Platform : Deukmejian’s support of Prop. 111 leaves GOP bereft of its best issue--no taxes.

An apparition haunted the Republican festivities Tuesday night as the party’s leadership gathered in Los Angeles to watch the election returns. True, Pete Wilson emerged unscathed (if unnoticed) from the Republican primary, with $3.5 million to spend against a politically bloodied and financially busted opponent. But there was also a ghost at the banquet, which, if allowed to linger, may forebode an end to the Republican resurgence that began in 1978 with Proposition 13.

The supreme irony is that the ghost was the invited guest of the party’s absent host, the governor.

It was George Deukmejian who squandered the influence of his office and reputation to front for Proposition 111. By so doing, he put the Republican stamp on a measure that subverted what little remains of the Gann spending limit, essentially destroying the last significant remnant of the tax revolt upon which he was elected and robbing the Republican Party of its most decisive claim against the Democrats: that Republicans won’t raise taxes.

Led by Deukmejian, the proponents spent more than $5 million to coax wary voters into accepting a “modest” tax increase to restore California’s transportation system. They suspended the law that guarantees the public an unbiased ballot summary and literally wrote their own campaign message, which was far from candid in describing the potential for big general tax increases. In an amazing feat of cynicism, they even called it the “Spending Limitation Act” as they deliberately blew the lid off the spending limit.

In coming days, voters may find that Proposition 111 has actually given the Legislature the authority to raise general taxes by more than three times the advertised gas-tax hike.

Any politician who interprets Proposition 111 as a mandate for higher general taxes does so at peril. The measure barely scraped by, despite the near unanimous support of the Sacramento Establishment, no organized opposition and a $5-million public-relations effort. This is hardly an omen of the taxpayer revolt’s demise.

The tax issue has been a potent and decisive issue for Republicans. The aftermath of Proposition 13 brought a record number of new Republican members into the Legislature in 1978. Deukmejian’s anti-tax pledge won him a historic landslide in 1986. Less than two years ago, three words elected George Bush: “Read my lips.”

Now the issue has been neatly neutered for them. If tax increases win with Republican votes in the Legislature--and pressure will be intense as the June 30 budget deadline approaches--the next Republican candidate who uses the “T word” may find that it doesn’t capture votes as it once did, not because the public accepts tax increases, but because they’ve been lied to once too often.

To add to the irony, the party leadership’s intense support for Proposition 111 came at the expense of Propositions 118 and 119, the reapportionment initiatives that were the best hope Republicans had of winning a legislative majority in the next decade.

The funds spent to ruin the tax issue were exacted largely from the pro-Republican community that might otherwise have fueled the reapportionment campaign, which led decisively in early polls. Instead of a statesman’s plea from a retiring governor to restore fairness to the election process, his considerable prestige went to shoring up acceptance of a decidedly un-Republican cause.

Tuesday’s election produced the worst of both worlds for Republicans: a Republican tax increase that robs their candidates of their most potent issue, and a Democratic gerrymander that will maximize the political damage.

With Pete Wilson’s election the last remaining hope of averting a blatantly partisan gerrymander, what lies ahead as the budget deadline approaches takes on critical importance. Deukmejian is riveted on the humiliation of handing his successor the same kind of deficit he has monotonously scolded his predecessor for leaving. Faced with $3.5 billion of his own red ink, the pressure to compromise with the Legislature’s majority for some relief from statutory cost-of-living increases in welfare programs will be enormous.

The price exacted by legislative Democrats may well be enough Republican votes to use some of the new spending authority granted by Proposition 111.

If that happens, the Republican Party and its candidates may well appear to voters across the state as a cheap copy of the tax-prone Democrats. And if that’s all the Republican Party can offer, the ghost at Tuesday’s banquet may well be joined by many more in November.