PERSPECTIVES ON THE ELECTION : The Ball Is Now in GOP’s Court : It can win back Clinton Republicans by dropping the mean-spirited agenda of ’92 and backing caring leaders like Jack Kemp.

In 1988, George Bush carried Orange County with about 68% of the vote. In 1992, he got only 44%.

What caused many lifelong Republicans to bolt their party, and what is attracting new voters to Bill Clinton?

Kathryn Thompson is one of the “Orange Eight” who jumped into the Clinton camp on the morning following the GOP national convention. In 1988 she gave the Republican National Convention $100,000 as a member of Team 100 and served as a California Bush delegate to the Republican National Convention. Thompson best summarizes the story I heard in 1992 from hundreds of Republican defectors. “It’s like a commercial airline crash. It isn’t any one thing, it’s a combination of things that all go wrong at the same time.”

The Clinton Republicans I met usually (though not always) fit a profile that is vigorously pro-business but support free choice on abortion; support a national policy encouraging new industry through tax incentives and by investing federal funds in research and development; want universal access to health care (with some reservations about “play or pay” as a financing mechanism); seek accelerated investment in roads, bridges, transit, pollution control and communications; a lean but strong military presence overseas; enforcement of the death penalty; and a “workfare” system to replace existing welfare entitlements. Some favor voucher systems for schools, others do not. Most Clinton Republicans I know are between the ages of 36 and 52; but there is also a large cluster between ages 20 and 25.

Clinton Republicans were universally disgusted by the 1992 Republican National Convention, especially by Patrick Buchanan’s endorsement of a holy war. They were tired of listening to President Bush blame all of America’s woes on the Congress.

Roger Johnson is chairman of Western Digital, a Fortune 500 company based in Orange County. One of the first Clinton Republicans, Johnson notes that, “Eisenhower, Nixon and Reagan were able to work with Congress. Bush blames Congress for everything, yet he signed every budget they presented to him.”

The Clinton Republicans were mostly befuddled more than angered by President Bush’s handling of the economy. Thompson, Johnson and dozens (maybe hundreds) of Republican business leaders tried to motivate Bush into a new economic program as early as 1990. In face-to-face meetings they recited specific examples of how the economic crisis was affecting their communities and their own companies. To their amazement, Bush would tell them: (a) The economic crisis was a media fiction and (b) the Darman-Brady-Boskin fiscal and economic programs would soon reinvigorate the nation, culminating in major economic expansion in the first or second quarter of 1992.

“I felt like I was listening to Herbert Hoover telling America, ‘Prosperity is just around the corner,’ ” one executive said.

Did the Clinton Republicans make a difference in the 1992 presidential campaign? You bet. Forget the role of our formal organization; the fact is that grass-roots Republicans deserting George Bush played a vital role in Bill Clinton’s success.

Bush lost us because he lacked a policy compass; abdicated national political leadership to assuage the likes of Pat Robertson, Pat Buchanan and Bob Dornan, and he repeatedly made important promises that he failed to fulfill.

And unlike the period from 1968 to 1988, in 1992 the Democratic Party offered a smart, moderate alternative with a campaign as competent as the candidate himself.

Will Clinton Republicans be a force in future congressional and statehouse races similar to the impact Reagan Republicans played form 1980 to 1990? A lot depends on how well Bill Clinton does in office, especially the extent to which he keeps his promise to hold down federal taxes and spending.

Largely, however, the ball is in the Republicans’ court.

If the GOP hopes to be competitive it will need to strip its pro-religious, anti-woman, anti-gay (together, read “anti-civil rights”) platforms and its efforts to use taxpayer funds for parochial schools; it will have to embrace universal access to health care as an entitlement of citizenship, and it will need to find meaningful programs and messages of hope to replace the spiteful, mean-spirited rhetoric and dirty tricks that defined the 1992 Bush campaign.

The odds-on GOP nominee for 1996 is Jack Kemp, one of the most genuinely caring leaders in either party. If he can suppress the platform of the religious zealots who adore Kemp but who helped ruin Bush, the GOP may have a chance in 1996. If not, they’ll be a long time on the outs, and they’ll deserve it.