GOP Drafters Shift, Won’t Call ’90 Tax Hike a Mistake

Prodded by President Bush’s reelection campaign, GOP platform drafters changed their minds Tuesday and decided to call the controversial 1990 tax increase agreed to by Bush “recessionary” instead of “a mistake.”

Some Bush campaign strategists apparently feared that Democrats would use the “mistake” phrasing adopted in Monday’s platform draft against the President, even though Bush himself has used similar language in describing his decision to approve the tax hike.

Republican leaders gathered here in this convention city sought to minimize the shift. “I thought what we did yesterday (Monday) was acceptable,” said Minnesota Rep. Vin Weber, the author of the disputed phrases in the economic section of the platform. “But they (Bush strategists) wanted some minor modifications, which is OK.”

But the flap serves to remind voters of two realities: that Bush reneged on his 1988 “read my lips, no new taxes” pledge, and that his reelection campaign is still in disarray on the eve of his renomination.

And in another complication for Republican strategists, Bush said in a television interview Tuesday that he would “stand by his child” if his granddaughter chose to have an abortion. (Story, A18).

As his supporters here were beating back efforts to modify the party’s longstanding call for a ban on abortion, Bush said he opposed abortion but would not turn away from a granddaughter who had one.

When asked on the “Dateline NBC” show “so in the end, the decision would be hers?” Bush responded: “Well, who else’s could it be?”

But it was the tax increase argument that captured most attention here.

“The guy (Bush) said it (the tax increase) was a mistake himself and why his people are reacting so strongly to this now is a mystery,” said Don Devine, a former Ronald Reagan White House official and chairman of the Committee for a Conservative Platform. In March, Bush said that his decision to retreat from his campaign promise not to raise taxes “probably wasn’t worth it,” given the “political flak” that ensued.

Underlying Tuesday’s rewrite of Monday’s language was the tension between Bush and the conservative core of his party, which has always suspected his ideological credentials. This antagonism, suppressed during the 1988 election campaign and the early years of the Bush presidency, was revived by Bush’s decision to support a 1990 tax increase to reach a budget agreement with Democratic congressional leaders aimed at reducing the deficit.

Conservatives have blamed that tax hike for contributing to the nation’s current economic difficulties and for one of its major consequences--Bush’s low standing in public opinion polls.

On Monday, members of the platform subcommittee charged with dealing with economic policy sought to shift responsibility for the tax hike to the Democrats, declaring: “Republicans believe that the taxes contained in the 1990 budget agreement were a mistake (and) should be repealed.”

After a meeting Tuesday with Charles Black, a senior adviser to the Bush campaign, the subcommittee added the assertion that the 1990 taxes had been “insisted on by the Democrats” and substituted the word “recessionary” for the words “a mistake.”

Black said that his talks with the platform subcommittee were prompted by phone calls from the Bush campaign rather than the White House. But he pointed out that Robert M. Teeter, chairman of the campaign, “talks to the White House every hour.”

And other Republicans here said that in private conversation Black indicated to them that he had heard directly from the White House.

“I would have just as soon gone with the (original) language, but the White House wanted some other language,” said Pennsylvania Rep. Robert S. Walker, who was one of the chief supporters of the anti-tax language drafted by Weber.

Black himself said he was simply trying to make “a few adjustments to put the platform in sync with what our campaign has been saying.”

Bush’s comments on abortion created another source of confusion and distraction for the proceedings here, where his supporters were striving to get the abortion issue out of the way.

During nearly two hours of debate Tuesday, a series of motions to modify the total ban now advocated in the platform were soundly defeated. On the only roll call vote, the anti-abortion forces prevailed, 79 to 17.

“On this issue politically you must be consistent, you can’t move from side to side,” contended Howard (Bo) Callaway, former chairman of President Gerald R. Ford’s reelection campaign. “And on this issue, the President has been consistent,” Callaway said before he learned of Bush’s comments about his granddaughter.

When he was informed of what Bush had said, Callaway seemed startled. “The pro-choice people may try to make something out of that,” he said. Ann Stone, head of Republicans for Choice, one of the leaders of the fight to change the platform, contended that Bush’s comments would help the effort to get platform language asserting that the party was open to a variety of views on the issue.

But Phyllis Schlafly, chairwoman of the Republican National Coalition for Life, one of the anti-abortion movement’s most seasoned political operatives, appeared to take Bush’s statement in stride.

“What else would you expect him to say? You can’t get him to try to force his granddaughter to do something she doesn’t want to do,” she said.

Two leading California Republicans, Gov. Pete Wilson and Sen. John Seymour, both urged the party to modify its abortion stand. Wilson said if he were going to the Republican Convention--instead of staying home for state budget negotiations--he would vote to force the abortion issue to the convention floor. But in a letter to California’s delegates he said they should be guided by their “own personal convictions.”

Wilson acknowledged that “a divisive floor fight clearly does not serve our purpose” of reelecting the President because it “risks giving aid and comfort to our opponents.”

In a statement to the platform committee, Seymour said: “The proposed restrictions in the platform are divisive. Our party needs to reach out to all types of people in 1992, particularly Democrats and independents, who are pro-choice.”