COLUMN RIGHT : Conservatives’ Last Leg Faces the Saw : By yielding on taxes, Bush may have dealt Republican candidates a mortal blow.

In a terse, four-sentence statement composed over breakfast with the Democratic and Republican leadership of the House and Senate, George Bush may have given away the last best hope of the Republican Party in 1990 and 1992.

By appearing to agree that new taxes (or increases in old ones) are necessary to reduce the federal deficit, Bush damaged his and his party’s claims to be conservatives interested in something more important than politics-as-usual. For the past decade, the GOP has been dominated by Ronald Reagan-style conservatism, which stood forthrightly for at least three principles--a stronger national defense, the restoration of moral equilibrium in American life and lower taxes. One by one, President Bush has kindly, gently begun to yield on these principles.

A stronger national defense has become a casualty to changing conditions in Eastern Europe and the perceived decline in the Soviet threat. In part, this is a tribute to the success of Republican defense policy and to Bush’s adroitness at foreign policy, which I acknowledge. Nevertheless, today’s defense debate concerns how drastically to cut military spending and how fast to bring the troops home, not the continuing vulnerability of the United States to ballistic-missile attack or the still-ominous rate of Soviet armaments production.

Although Bush has not backed away from his opposition to abortion on demand, neither has he objected to Lee Atwater’s efforts to “broaden” the party’s stance on the question. On the other social (really, moral) issues--for example, the National Endowment for the Arts’ funding of obscene works--Bush has been at best equivocal. He did rally ‘round the flag, both in the Pledge of Allegiance controversy during the last presidential campaign and in the recent flag-burning brouhaha. But this is the exception that proves the rule.

The only leg of the conservative stool that remained in good shape was the opposition to tax increases. Alas, this is precisely the leg he now seems intent on sawing off. Bush could not have anticipated the present situation more clearly than in his acceptance speech at the 1988 Republican convention. “The Congress will push me to raise taxes,” he declared, “and I’ll say no, and they’ll push, and I’ll say no, and they’ll push again, and I’ll say to them, ‘Read my lips: No new taxes.’ ” Except that when they pushed the third time, he fell over.

To be fair, I should say that he is in danger of falling over. No tax increases have been approved yet and his defenders in Washington have pointed to the sly language of his statement, which (despite its vetting by Democrats Thomas Foley, George Mitchell and Richard Gephardt) calls only for “tax revenue increases,” not-- get it?--tax increases. That is, tax revenues could be increased without raising tax rates.

Perhaps, then, Bush has snookered Foley, Mitchell and Gephardt into believing that he will abide an increase in taxes. But the political cost of the move, whether sincere or not, is manifest. By in effect calling for new taxes, Bush repudiates the Republican Party platform and impeaches the whole conservative analysis of the excessive growth of government. This analysis showed that so long as the federal government was viewed as capable of securing every human need, and needs were confused with desires, then the size and power of government were in theory unlimited. In practice, this meant that the federal government would tend to expand in response to constant new demands for spending that would, in the end, always outstrip available revenues, no matter how much tax revenues increased (as they did prodigiously in the 1980s). Politically, therefore, conservatives had to rein in government revenues in order to exert some minimal discipline on federal expenditures.

By agreeing or seeming to agree that new taxes are needed, Bush invites the Democrats to take control of the national agenda once again. This is the same mistake that President Reagan made in 1982 when he acquiesced in what was billed as the largest peacetime tax increase in American history. His Administration never quite recovered from it, and it did nothing to stem the loss of Republican House and Senate seats in the 1982 election. Indeed, the demoralization within Republican ranks caused by that tax compromise almost certainly contributed to those losses.

One wonders how, if Republicans embrace tax increases, they will distinguish themselves from Democrats in the upcoming elections. Unless, of course, the ironic result of President Bush’s apparent surrender will be to energize conservative Republicans to run not only against the Democrats--but also against George Bush.