Conservatives Gather, Target Clinton Policies for Counterattack

After a frustrating year watching President Clinton steal much of the rhetorical thunder on the right, conservatives are mapping a counterattack.

The blueprint that emerged this weekend from a conference of conservative leaders and grass-roots activists is aimed at exploiting what they view as the juicy targets offered by Clinton’s policies, including tax increases, the President’s espousal of family values and his response to crises in Bosnia and North Korea.

“Clinton has reinvigorated the right,” said David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, one of the sponsoring organizations of the three-day Conservative Political Action Conference, which ended Saturday.

The strategy that emerged at the sessions included efforts to:

* Contrast Clinton’s centrist promises with what conference participants say is his liberal performance. “He talks about fighting crime, but he cuts the budget for the Drug Enforcement Administration,” said University of Delaware sophomore Thomas Hart, one of the 1,800 people who attended the conference forums and caucused in the corridors.

“Clinton says he only wants to raise taxes on the rich,” said Brett Balkcom, a Republican precinct chairman in Forestville, Md. “But the people he’s taxing are the only ones who have the capital to risk to give the rest of us jobs.”

* Spotlight what the participants said are the President’s weak points, such as foreign policy: “We are on the same downward spiral as we were in the (Jimmy) Carter years when the U.S. was feared by none, respected by few and ignored by many,” said Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.).

In his address to the conference, Dole chided Clinton for temporizing with North Korea while it develops a nuclear arsenal, and with Serbia while it mauls Bosnia. Dole urged that the United States ignore the arms embargo against Bosnia, unilaterally if necessary.

Another Clinton weakness, conservatives believe, is his push for health care reform, which they contend reveals his underlying liberal thrust.

“When the American people understand what Clinton’s plan entails in cost, jobs and freedom, it is going to get a reception that is going to make the weather outside seem warm and wonderful,” said Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.), referring to a crippling winter storm in the capital.

* Persuade citizens that conservative principles and policies can better meet their everyday needs.

Conservatives need to make the case to voters that Clinton and the Democrats are “not using government to serve you, they are making government your master,” said Brett Schundler, who in 1992 became the first modern-day Republican mayor of the Democratic stronghold of Jersey City, N.J. “We need to give examples that show how government can be used to serve people.”

The conservatives also found a contradiction in Clinton’s stress on family values. Former education secretary and drug enforcement chief William J. Bennett told one conference session that Clinton’s talk of traditional values is fine, but “the American people want him to govern by them and live by them.”

Officials said that the 1,800 people attending the meetings set a record for the conference, which has been held since 1973.

“I think it’s just great to find out there are so many other people who think the way I do,” said Paula Wilson, a Lynchburg, Va., housewife, who said she was drawn to the meeting by her fear of big government.

Conservative direct-mail specialist Richard A. Viguerie said his business is soaring. He said that while he has been mailing out 25 million to 30 million letters a year on behalf of conservative groups, in 1994 he expects that to swell to 75 million letters, the most since Carter was in the White House in the late 1970s.

But Viguerie said conservatives are missing something now that they had then--a clearly recognizable champion to fill Ronald Reagan’s shoes. “We don’t have a point person,” he said.

Republican National Chairman Haley Barbour urged those at the conference not to think too far ahead. “I remind you that the first thing we can do to help elect a President in 1996 is to focus on the 1994 elections,” he said.