‘92 REPUBLICAN CONVENTION : Platform in Clear Contrast to Rival Democrats’ Policies : Positions: The GOP’s manifesto is much longer. And it misses no opportunity to quarrel with the opposition on a wide range of issues.

The 1992 platform to be presented today at the Republican convention not only contrasts the party’s bedrock beliefs with those espoused by the Democrats, it also illustrates the fundamental realities governing the campaign strategies of the rival candidates.

Seeking to find their way to that proverbial promised land, the political mainstream, platform drafters for Democratic standard-bearer Bill Clinton sought to gloss over some of their party’s traditional liberalism and present themselves as apostles of moderation. To some extent, they viewed the drafting of their 1992 platform as an exercise in damage control.

But they still left the Republicans plenty of room for disagreement and debate. Bush strategists see their platform, expected to be swiftly approved at today’s opening convention session, as a weapon that can be used to bludgeon the Democrats and inspire support from conservatives who are only mildly enthusiastic about Bush’s candidacy.

The GOP manifesto is about three times longer and far more detailed than the Democratic document. And it misses no opportunity to quarrel with the Democrats on a whole range of issues, from gay rights and tax hikes to defense spending and trade negotiations.

The fundamental indictment that runs through the six sections and 95 pages of the GOP platform is that the Democrats are only masquerading as agents of moderate change. Underneath this vote-getting facade, it suggests, the Democrats still adhere to their flawed tendencies of the past--excessive spending, burdensome taxation, disregard for individual rights and private enterprise and softness on national defense.

The hope of the Bush strategists is that their platform’s strident tone and aggressive positions will help rally the GOP’s activist conservative cadre to support their beleaguered President. That is why they agreed to accept platform planks that in some cases go further to the right than Bush himself.

On abortion, for example, the Republican platform’s opposition to a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy is absolute and unyielding. Bush himself is on record as favoring a constitutional amendment that would ban abortion in general, but would allow exceptions in cases of rape and incest.

But conservative strategists say that Bush had no choice but to go along with the platform’s hard-line positions because he desperately needs all the right-wing help he can get in waging his uphill battle against Clinton.

“Bush has done so much to make conservatives angry that he has to find any way that he can to atone,” said David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union and political director of Bush’s first presidential campaign in 1980.

High on the conservative grievance list is Bush’s 1990 decision to approve a tax increase, which the platform labels as “recessionary”--and blames on the Democrats.

The Democratic platform, by contrast, is a relatively bland document. “It is very general and very broad in its approach to issues,” said Daniel Ward, a University of Houston political scientist.

Clinton was able to gain approval for this approach because of the pragmatic mood among party liberals, who were more interested in winning back middle-class voters than in getting platform planks expounding on their favorite causes.

That strategy has won applause from Democratic leaders here in Texas and other states where voters have long been turned off by the party’s traditional liberalism, with its emphasis on big government activism.

“A lot of us wanted just that sort of moderate platform,” former Houston Mayor Kathryn Whitmire, who now teaches public policy at the University of Houston, said in an interview.

Conservatives acknowledge that the Democratic platform has an uncharacteristically moderate tone. “The preamble sounds like a Pat Buchanan speech,” said Terry Jeffrey, policy director of conservative columnist Buchanan’s unsuccessful challenge to Bush’s renomination. He cited as an example language that calls for “a revolution . . . to take power away from entrenched bureaucracies and narrow interests in Washington.”

“They’re trying to repackage themselves and fuzz some of their positions,” said Keene.

But conservatives contend that the Democratic platform still offers plenty of evidence that deep down, Democrats really haven’t changed much. For example, Jeffrey called the Democratic civil rights plank, which vows to fight against discrimination on grounds of sexual preference, as well as race, gender and religion, “an outrage.”

Whitmire thinks that the GOP may be on the winning side on some of these social issues, recalling a furor raised here in 1985 over a city council ban on discrimination against gays that ultimately was overturned in a referendum.

But she thinks the Democrats may come out ahead on another so-called social issue, gun control, which receives qualified support from the Democratic platform but draws flat opposition from the GOP. “Right now, people are so angry about crime that I think they are ready for gun control,” she said.

In any case, Democrats and conservatives seem to agree on one point about the platforms. “No one will be able to say that there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the parties,” said Jeffrey, recalling an old slogan used by George C. Wallace in his independent campaign for the presidency in 1968.

“This year, people are going to have a real choice.”