COMMENTARY ON GOP POLITICS : Pete Wilson and Conservatives: How We Can All Get Along : Governor and the party base must focus on areas of agreement or much more than ‘just’ the ’94 election will be lost.

If, as Ambrose Bierce believed, a year is “a period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments,” then Gov. Pete Wilson has more than 700 bad days ahead before votes are counted in his reelection bid in 1994. Among some Republicans, especially some Orange County Republicans, there’s an unwholesome anticipation of just a sequence of disasters for the governor.

It’s extraordinary, really, how deep the disaffection runs between the state’s leader and the state’s Republican base. And alarming. The old saw about conservatives and Republican presidential candidates seems applicable to California’s conservatives and the governor: You can’t win an election with just the conservatives, but you cannot win without them.

That’s a true statement. Conservative votes, especially Orange County’s legions of conservative votes, cannot carry the state. But for Republicans they are absolutely crucial to winning. If the governor was up for reelection next month, he would lose because Orange County would not support him.

As a Republican centrist, I believe the governor is critical to the state and the national GOP’s recovery from Nov. 3’s defeat. I also believe that the conservative base cannot be ignored, indeed that it is crucial to a Republican renaissance.

Wilson must build a bridge to Orange County conservatives (and through that effort, to all California conservatives). Orange County’s conservatives must, for their part, be willing to welcome any such effort, applaud it and enthusiastically support Wilson’s program throughout the state.

The alternative is simple abdication to the Democrats.

All well and good, but how to do it? Here are some suggestions, for both the governor and the conservatives.

First, the governor needs to bring some Orangemen and Orangewomen into his cabinet. Quick, name a single Republican activist of stature from our county who is serving in the Wilson Administration. Sorry. There aren’t any.

This is the single most irritating aspect of the Wilson regime--the systematic exclusion of conservatives from positions of authority within the state government.

It is easy to remedy the problem. I hope the governor does. In considering crucial personnel decisions over the next quarter, Wilson would do well to recall Disraeli’s thoughts on the subject: “Nothing is more ruinous to political connection than the fear of justly rewarding your friends and the promotion of ordinary men of opposite opinions in preference to qualified adherents. It is not becoming in any Minister to decry party who has risen by party. We should always remember that if we were not partisans we should not be Ministers.”

Next, the governor needs to spend some time just meeting with the party troops. Vice President Dan Quayle has spent more time with the party activists and its Central Committee in the last two years than has the governor. And Quayle, remote from the Orange County scene, nevertheless understood that the essence of such meetings was listening, not talking. It’s a good model. It’s not difficult to treat mainstream GOP activists with courtesy and respect. In fact, it’s rewarding.

Finally, the governor’s agenda in his first two years has embraced some issues near and dear to all California conservatives, such as workers’ comp reform, but there are some ready-made issues with unique appeal in Orange County that are there for the championing. The Air Quality Management District’s reckless endangering of the basin’s economy comes to mind, and the governor has nothing to lose and everything to gain by leading the fight to restore balance to that agency’s operations.

The governor could do all of these things, but no rational elected official will do them absent the promise of cooperation and, crucially, credit for trying.

Some Orange County conservatives get a kick out of kicking the governor. This temptation in Republican circles has a long pedigree. It’s as silly as it is destructive.

Rather than calling down plagues on the governor’s house, conservative leadership should begin the party’s regrouping by recalling Wilson’s successes. No address by a Republican activist should be considered responsible that omits the mantra of Gov. Wilson’s finest achievements.

First, he won a fair political redistricting. Only losing incumbents complain on this front. We got a level playing field this year, and we got waxed. But the field’s still level, and its only 23 months till we try again. Thanks, governor.

Second, Wilson stood tough on taxes in 1992, and is apparently prepared to do so again in 1993. A four-star performance deserves recognition and acknowledgment. Sure, he might have cut in some places that he chose to leave alone. But the bottom line was the one conservatives have always demanded--a balanced budget with no new taxes.

And Wilson has championed workers’ comp reform. This is one of the most awful issues around. Few voters understand it; few ever will. It takes genuine leadership to commit to taking on the issue and the interests arrayed in defense of the present corrupt system. Wilson has charged this particular hill, even as some conservatives have refused to try and master even the specifics of the problem.

There are some issues on which some conservatives and the governor will never agree, and perhaps abortion is the single greatest obstacle to intra-party peace.

My belief is that if the conservatives or the governor choose to exile either pro-choice or pro-life folks from their respective “circles,” then the Republicans are doomed.

A reciprocal tolerance--even on this most difficult issue--is hard to predict with much optimism, but perhaps there is some common ground here as well. Perhaps everyone can agree that there are too many abortions, and that the Republican Party ought to be committed to making the choice to have a baby more palatable to more people by working jointly to assure prenatal care, early childhood care and ready adoption alternatives.

Again and again issues will arise that provide excuses for internecine conflict. Small-minded people love such fights. But even a string of wins in such battles yields only an impoverished legacy, like being crowned King of the Political Lilliputians.

Good copy makes for poor political performance. If the next six months yields a string of stories on bitter Republican infighting, then the game is over for ’94.

I don’t believe the party can afford such a feeding frenzy. I’m absolutely convinced the state can’t. Who makes the first move is of little consequence, but somebody had better get rolling. Soon.