Word From Business: No More Gridlock

It is axiomatic in American politics that Republicans are conservative, Democrats liberal. But it is equally axiomatic that there are liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats, and that political success goes to the party that most intelligently builds some of the opposition into its own electoral coalition.

Conservatives and liberals divide, further, into cultural and economic conservatives and liberals. Last summer, at the Republican convention, an appeal to extreme cultural conservatism--Patrick J. Buchanan describing America’s “religious war”--drove moderate cultural conservatives into the Democratic coalition and contributed significantly to Republican electoral disaster in November. A comparable appeal to extreme economic conservatism bodes equally ill for what remains of the Republican coalition.

At issue is what kind of opposition Republicans should offer to the Democrats’ economic package. For the Republicans, is it, as Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) recently said in an interview, “playing into their hands” to negotiate over this package? Is it better simply to shout “No!” at the whole of it and then let the majority party stew in its own juice? Or is it better, as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce believes, to support what can be supported in the package, oppose--as forthrightly as possible--what must be opposed and then let the country move on?

The Chamber has a long list of quarrels with the Clinton economic package. Chamber President Richard L. Lesher, in a typical letter to Capitol Hill, writes: “ . . . spending restraint is the key to long-term deficit reduction. . . . Equivalent and/or future spending restraint is not enough.” But after extensive post-election consultation with its 215,000 members, the Chamber concluded that gridlock--each party determined to foil the other, and to hell with the country--was what the membership (70% Republican) most deeply opposed. The 60-member Chamber board has urged compromise with President Clinton where compromise was possible. All-out victory, victory at all cost, was simply not what the membership wanted.

For its pains, alas, the Chamber has been pilloried as collaborationist by the far-right press and by a coterie of key congressional Republicans. Lesher himself has been subjected to “opposition research” of the sort ordinarily reserved for Democrats in hard-fought election campaigns.

Fortunately, the campaign isn’t working. Chamber revenue for February and March, 1993--precisely the period of this fraternization with the “enemy”--is up 10% over 1992. And no wonder: The Chamber knows better than the Republican congressional leadership what the business community of the country really wants. If, against those clear wishes, that leadership continues its quest for victory and revenge, GOP Chairman Haley P. Barbour may in short order be looking back ruefully on a replay of last year’s convention.