Bush’s War Success Routs the GOP Right’s Offensive

When the 102nd Congress convened in January, right-wing Republicans--including some from Orange County--were itching for a fight with George Bush.

The President, in their view, had sold the conservative cause down the river. Not only had Bush agreed to go along with Democrats on a hefty tax increase, but he appeared to be on the verge of abandoning conservative doctrine on other fronts, including pornography in the arts and homosexual rights. And he was threatening a potentially costly military campaign against Iraq that many conservatives believed was ill-timed and ill-advised.

But now, as the Persian Gulf War draws to a successful close--and Bush’s approval ratings soar to an all-time high--conservatives in Congress are not only holding their fire, some appear to be in outright retreat. Their plight was underscored by the wildly enthusiastic standing ovations that greeted the President on Wednesday night during his address to a joint session of Congress.

“Certainly in the near term, no one (on the Republican right) is going to be falling all over themselves to oppose the President,” says David M. Mason, a government analyst for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank here in Washington.

The victory in the Gulf has clearly bought the President time, a congressional Republican agrees. “Bush now has a second lease on life, as far as conservatives go,” says Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Long Beach), who represents part of Orange County and has sharply criticized the President for last fall’s budget deal.

Ironically, to some analysts, the newly tamed Republicans include Rep. Newt Gingrich of Georgia, the usually combative House minority whip who led the GOP revolt against Bush during autumn’s budget debate and almost single-handedly unraveled the budget accord.

Just a few months ago, Gingrich and his colleagues seemed certain to be the lions of any new attack from the right on the President’s political flanks. But today, Gingrich sounds almost like a lamb.

“The enemy of conservatism in Washington, D.C., is the Democratic Congress, not the Republican President,” he insists. “We fought the budget deal in October, and I’m not willing to waste a whole lot of energy picking a fight . . . about (a debate) that’s over.”

And Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove), another conservative stalwart who is an admirer of the President, says he has been advising his right-wing colleagues to “bag” any attempt to “go after George Bush.”

While Democrats search for a candidate “to ride into the valley of death” in 1992, Republicans should “hunker down, get some good conservatives elected to the Senate and the House next year and leave George Bush alone,” Dornan says.

Not surprisingly, such cooing by conservatives has been music to White House ears because senior presidential strategists have been worrying for months that the right wing might launch a challenge that would threaten Bush’s efforts to win by a landslide in 1992.

Not only will the seeming truce lessen that worry, it will also probably give Bush more freedom in hammering out the Administration’s position on a spate of domestic legislation on which it will have to compromise with Democrats this year.

“It’s a liberating thing,” one White House official says, arguing that with the pullback by the party’s right--and Bush’s increased popularity over the war--the President now has “the same freedom Ronald Reagan had in 1981” to push his own agenda.

How long the era of right-wing good feeling will last, however, still is an open question.

Although Democrats have been silent in the face of Bush’s success in the Gulf, strategists say they intend to pursue a spate of initiatives in coming weeks--including new civil rights and family legislation--that are all but assured to provoke a confrontation with the White House.

“The Democratic message is, what are the troops coming home to?” a top Democratic congressional strategist says.

Political analysts say how long the GOP right remains muted will depend on how firm the President is willing to be in fending off these new Democratic efforts.

“If the White House adopts a strategy of trying to be President of all the people--and we’ll hear rhetoric of that sort--that’s going to mean a lot of compromises on (Capitol) Hill,” the Heritage Foundation’s Mason frets.

“That ends up probably being good for George Bush, and probably bad for congressional Republicans,” he says.

The array of new Democratic legislative efforts could prove difficult for the Administration. High on the list are two measures that Bush vetoed last year, partly as a result of opposition from GOP conservatives.

The first would have made it easier for workers to file job-related lawsuits alleging racial discrimination. The other would have required employers to provide workers with up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for seriously ill relatives or newly arrived children.

Bush rejected the first, known as the Civil Rights Act of 1990, contending that its standards would have been so tough that employers would have been forced to set racial hiring quotas.

He vetoed the leave measure because he said it would “unduly” have intruded on employers.

Democrats have also proposed a bill--again, opposed by Republican conservatives--that would bar employers from hiring permanent replacements for striking workers.

And the Administration itself has unveiled a bevy of new measures that seem likely to provoke battles with Democrats. For example, liberals say:

Bush’s transportation bill places too great a financial burden on states.

His proposed energy legislation, calling for increased development of oil resources and nuclear power, all but ignores conservation measures.

Key White House lieutenants say the conservatives have nothing to worry about. Bush’s own agenda is wholly compatible with causes advanced by the Republican right wing, one strategist insists, noting that “Bush is a conservative Republican.”

But some analysts predict that Bush will take a middle-of-the-road approach that will not please his party’s right.

“The question that is really there now, for a President who has roughly an 85% approval rating at this point, is does he use it or does he lose it?” argues Norman J. Ornstein, a political scholar with the American Enterprise Institute.

“His instinct, I think, is going to be to coast and bask in the glow of this incredible wave of admiration and warmth and not use up that popularity to try and knock heads on a domestic agenda,” he says. “That will not be good news for conservatives.”

The Heritage Foundation’s Mason agrees: “One of the big dangers for the Bush Administration right now is to become mesmerized with poll numbers.”

Despite the current GOP cease-fire, many conservative Republicans remain suspicious of Bush.

“Up until now, President Bush has not exhibited the willingness to get confrontational with Congress on the issue of spending,” says Rep. William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton), one of the most conservative members of Congress. “He has not vetoed a single appropriations bill.”

Rohrabacher agrees: “Bush is not a conservative Republican, he’s a moderate Republican. Conservatives want to get out there and fight and push the agenda. Moderate Republicans just want to sit down and cut a deal.”

Nevertheless, Rohrabacher concedes that the victory in the Gulf changes things: “George Bush has excelled as a commander-in-chief. I just wish he would negotiate with the Democrats over taxes the way he negotiated with Saddam Hussein.”

Still, Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), who heads the conservative Republican Study Committee, warns that despite the temporary truce between conservatives and the White House, the philosophical campaign for the heart and mind of George Bush is far from over.

“We have been trying to influence the White House on political strategy and the issues themselves--that has not shaken out yet,” he says.

Times staff writer James Gerstenzang contributed to this article.