Fragile Coalition Prompts GOP’s Mixing of Messages

Is the White House deliberately sending mixed messages on abortion?

After hammering down a staunchly anti-abortion plank in their party platform, GOP leaders have awakened the last few days to find Barbara Bush questioning their work and the President himself saying he would support a grandchild who opted to have an abortion.

The President’s remarks echoed Vice President Dan Quayle’s recent comment that he would support his daughter if she chose to have an abortion--an option the GOP platform would deny her. And on Friday, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said Bush, while affirming his support for the platform, had no objections to his wife’s call for the document to remain neutral on abortion.

Asked in Santa Monica on Friday about this flurry of head-turning remarks from the White House, Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton said: “I don’t know whether they’re just compelled to say what they really believe or if they’re trying to have it both ways.”

Publicly and privately, White House officials insist there is no strategy to send a subliminal message of tolerance on the abortion issue. “Do not read tons into this,” said Torie Clarke, the Bush campaign’s press secretary.

But Democrats and other political observers maintain that the clearly conflicting signals symbolize the difficulties facing Bush as he tries to hold together a coalition whose glue--economic prosperity--has dissolved. In the past few weeks, the GOP has gone through somewhat similar, if less tortured, contortions on gay rights and the environment--two other issues that divide their base.

“As a party we have not dealt with the fact that our coalition is under tremendous stress,” said GOP pollster Bill McInturff.

Like all successful national coalitions, the GOP majority in the 1980s always embodied, and transcended, contradictions. In 1988, Bush--like Ronald Reagan before him--attracted socially tolerant young voters even while emphasizing conservative social positions--such as opposition to abortion--aimed at religious conservatives and older ethnic Democrats, primarily in the urban Northeast.

Although uncomfortable with such views, younger and suburban voters typically sided with the GOP in the belief that Republicans were most likely to produce prosperity, analysts say. “A little disposable income will cover up a lot of stuff,” says Democratic strategist Bill Carrick.

But with dissatisfaction over Bush’s economic performance now widespread, the cultural contradictions are surfacing. Heading into next week’s GOP convention, both groups--the older so-called “Reagan Democrats” and the younger suburbanites--are restive, polls indicate.

In a Gallup Organization survey completed earlier this week, Clinton led Bush 57% to 31% among voters under 34 years old--making that the Democrats’ strongest age group.

At the same time, polls suggest that the Reagan Democrats--who are heavily blue-collar and largely Roman Catholic--are moving back to the party of their parents. Surveying Reagan Democrats in the key swing states of Michigan, Ohio and Illinois, Michigan-based Democratic pollster Ed Sarpolus found Clinton leading Bush in early August by a whopping 72% to 16%.

Until his remarks on abortion in an NBC interview earlier this week, Bush had worked harder since the Democratic Convention to improve his standing among socially conservative voters than to recapture independents, many analysts in both parties agree.

In the last month Bush repeatedly emphasized issues believed to be of particular concern to urban Catholics, the quintessential Reagan Democrats. For instance, in late July he visited a Catholic high school in Philadelphia to pitch his plan to provide government money to help parents send their children to private schools, including religious schools.

In early August, speaking to the Knights of Columbus convention in New York, Bush implicitly criticized Clinton for supporting the distribution of condoms in schools, attacked the Democrats’ welfare reform proposals as likely to breed further dependency, declared again his support for school prayer and affirmed in the strongest possible terms his opposition to abortion.

Noting that he has vetoed seven bills seeking to loosen federal restrictions on abortion funding or counseling, Bush declared: “I promise you again today, no matter the political price . . . I am going to stand on my conscience and let my conscience be my guide when it comes to matters of life.”

Democrats say that despite such efforts, they see no sign that Bush can recapture the wayward Reagan Democrats by stressing social issues.

“The family values today for Reagan Democrats is keeping the family together through keeping food on the table, and having their kids go to college so they can do better than their parents did,” says Sarpolus.

On the other hand, some analysts believe that without the offsetting attraction of a buoyant economy, these efforts to polarize the electorate around social issues are hurting Bush with younger and independent voters. Most polls show Republican defections from Bush have been concentrated primarily among younger voters. Meanwhile, Clinton has taken a 2-1 advantage among independents.

Such numbers, Democrats maintain, may be inspiring the softer line on abortion from Bush, the vice president and the First Lady, as well as the President’s declaration in the same NBC interview that he would embrace a grandchild who was homosexual, although he would urge the child not to “become an advocate for a lifestyle that in my view is not normal.”

That response--reinforced by Barbara Bush’s suggestion this week that homosexuality was a “personal thing” unfit for political debate--followed weeks in which senior Bush campaign strategists have pilloried Clinton for his support of gay rights.

Democrats believe Bush’s problems with young voters may be further exacerbated by his campaign’s handling of environmental questions, which also seems driven primarily by concerns about Reagan Democrats.

Early on, the GOP suggested it intended to defuse the issue by questioning Clinton’s credentials as an environmentalist--the strategy that proved successful against Michael S. Dukakis in 1988. But since Clinton picked Tennessee Sen. Al Gore--who environmentalists consider a strong ally--as his vice presidential nominee, the Bush campaign has moved to a tougher line. With Quayle at the point, the GOP has argued that the Democrats would sacrifice jobs to protect trees and snail darters.

That message, like Bush’s social agenda, is aimed at blue-collar Reagan Democrats, fearful of factory shutdowns. But it could create another hurdle for Bush with younger voters “who believe there is no reason why a country as bountiful as ours should make a trade-off between jobs and the environment,” argues Carrick.

Bush’s message of the past few weeks has geographical implications too; by hammering at Clinton and Gore on environmental issues and affecting a hard line on social questions, Democrats believe the GOP is signaling it has little hope of contesting the green and tolerant West Coast--and will instead focus its fire on the heavily Catholic Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and Missouri.

“They have clearly decided that if they can reach out to Catholics, they can make inroads in the Northeast and the industrial Midwest,” said Stanley B. Greenberg, Clinton’s pollster. “And Clinton did have some difficulty with Catholic voters in the primaries . . . so it’s a tactic that superficially has some appeal. But it is embedded in a strategy that could prove costly by driving away younger, independent voters.”

Still, Bush’s efforts to court blue-collar Catholics in the Midwest may be complicated by his support for the recently concluded free trade agreement with Mexico--which many such voters see as a direct threat to their jobs. “You can’t put all this together,” laments one Republican operative.

Republican strategists close to the Bush campaign believe their best hope for surmounting these contradictions is to again subsume issues like abortion and the environment to a broader message of economic opportunity.

With that in mind, some of these operatives saw encouraging signs in James A. Baker III’s farewell remarks Thursday at the State Department as he discussed taking command of the White House and the reelection effort. Baker tried to cast the race as a choice between Democrats committed to expanding “top down” government and Republicans who believe the free market and government reforms based on decentralizing power offer the best opportunity for prosperity.

But even some Bush partisans wonder whether the President--after four years of anemic economic growth--has retained enough credibility to deliver an economic message that will suppress the other conflicts rumbling through his coalition.

“It’s not a question of the message,” said GOP pollster Edward A. Goeas, “but whether people are going to listen to the messenger.”