COLUMN RIGHT : Survivors Don’t Bother With Principle : Republicans in Washington seek respectability, and moderation is their path.

With the partial exception of Ronald Reagan, the Republican Party in recent decades has been dominated almost completely by people who have given a good deal of thought to politics as a career, but have hardly thought about the underlying principles of government. There was a perfect example of this just the other day.

George Bush appointed as his reelection campaign manager an old GOP hand by the name of Fred Malek, a familiar figure in GOP circles since the Nixon years. He is also not known to have strong philosophical convictions about government. A few days after he was named campaign chairman, the Rocky Mountain News reported that he had contributed thousands of dollars to the Senate campaigns of four prominent national Democrats, including former San Francisco mayor Dianne Feinstein, who hopes to unseat the incumbent California Republican, John Seymour.

Malek explained his generosity this way: “These people are all long-term personal friends. I think what it demonstrates is that personal relationships and admiration of character and competence sometimes go in a different direction than pure political considerations would lead you.”

Presumably this meant that, despite his financial support, Malek didn’t actually want his friends to win. The next day it was reported that Malek “regretted” his generosity and would be making amends with matching contributions to Republicans. Malek has made a habit of contributing to both sides in an election (in the California gubernatorial race, he gave to Feinstein and Pete Wilson).

This is individualized corporate political action committee strategy: the approach of those who seek to survive the vicissitudes of politics, rather than influence the political system. How perfect that such a man should be in charge of Bush’s reelection campaign.

Later it came out that there were other Republican appointees who had contributed to Democrats, including White House Counsel C. Boyden Gray and Robert Glauber, an assistant secretary of the Treasury. The story, confined to an inconspicuous corner of the Washington Post, was hardly noticed in the capital. There were a few discreet titters. Then it was forgotten.

Malek, it was said, retained the President’s confidence. Try to imagine the indignation if the campaign manager of a prominent Democratic candidate had contributed to the campaign coffers of, oh, let’s say Jesse Helms of North Carolina.

This suggests the following asymmetry, which is taken for granted in American politics: Liberals have no enemies to the left; conservatives have no friends to the right. Liberals do not acknowledge affinity with those to their left, but nonetheless treat them as tacit allies. At anti-Reagan rallies in the 1980s, the podium of protest was routinely shared by Roman Catholic clerics, Democratic pols, labor leaders, avowed communists, Salvadoran guerrillas: No enemies to the left. But when columnist Patrick J. Buchanan ran for President, he was immediately criticized by other conservatives, who often feel obliged to excommunicate those to their right. The spectrum of respectable discourse extends far to the left as a result, but never very far to the right.

When they get to Washington, Republicans are above all eager to seem respectable, and moderation is the safe path to that end. As a result we have ended up with something close to a one-party system. Republicans skirt criticism and get invited to the right parties by sounding like Democrats. It’s a contest between a Democratic Party with principles, although bad ones (that is, the use of government force to achieve equality), and a Republican Party without principles.

Not surprisingly, then, Bush is now all at sea. Beyond futile, uncontroversial slogans like “helping people,” he has no political principles that he feels he can safely embrace. He would like a Republican Congress, but his own campaign manager funds Democrats. He would like to be the education President but tells us that his plan is “neither liberal nor conservative.” (Why isn’t it?) He would like to “revive the economy” but seems to believe that the vehement restatement of his desire to do so will be sufficient to do the trick.

It won’t be enough, of course. The confiscatory taxation of capital will have to be ended, thereby bringing the United States into line with Japan and Germany. But this proposal makes Bush’s aides very uneasy. They know that it will be attacked as a plan to “help the rich.” Only someone who has worked out a few principles on which government ought to be based has a chance of resisting such attacks. Bush and his team disown all such principles, and they are in trouble as a result.