North Nomination Increases Odds of GOP Fratricide

A funny thing happened to the Republicans on their way to riding America’s disappointment with Bill Clinton back to national political dominance. The GOP’s own fratricide has gone into overdrive--led by Oliver L. North, the famous Marine lieutenant colonel turned Washington-basher, hero of the Christian right and devil figure of the GOP Establishment. His U.S. Senate nomination in Virginia, attained last week-end, is a political hand grenade that threatens to blow out one side of the Grand Old Party’s “big tent.” And not just in Virginia, but nationally.

In part, that’s because North’s chief backers, the religious right, may be past their peak in national support, but they’re still increasing their clout in the GOP. Party leaders worry that the controversy over North could provoke another crippling backlash like the one produced by the 1992 convention--or, alternatively, seed a religious-right third-party bolt, which could also be fatal.

Democrats, meanwhile, are not in any position to laugh. Midterm congressional elections, like those in November, are usually a referendum on the party in the White House--so Republicans could gain three or four Senate seats and 18 to 25 House seats, putting them just shy of control. This means, in 1995-96, an already weakened Clinton would confront the largest GOP opposition that a Democratic President has faced since 1951-52. Any North or religious-right embarrassment to the GOP won’t outweigh Whitewater or Paula Corbin Jones.

The GOP’s problem is that a 1994 midterm success doesn’t ensure any similar prospect for 1996. If anything, increased GOP numbers on Capitol Hill may only focus attention on party political divisions and the cultural tensions between well-heeled pin-stripers who want a 1996 convention city with good hotels and clubs and religious fundamentalist forces more concerned about sermons and trailer hookups.

North’s Senate race could also reveal declining political loyalty to both major parties. Despite his ability to win at a Virginia party convention dominated by rural, small-town and churchgoing supporters, North’s controversial 1989 conviction for lying to Congress (later set aside) blocks him from ever expecting a majority of the vote.

Normally, such weakness would reelect the Democratic incumbent. But Charles S. Robb has also lost credibility because of scandal. So outgoing Democratic governor, L. Douglas Wilder, throwing party loyalty to the winds, has decided to run as an independent. J. Marshall Coleman, a former GOP gubernatorial nominee with ties to moderates, is also moving toward an independent candidacy.

Such fragmentation could be unprecedented. I cannot remember any Senate race where both parties split, with factions of each deciding to mount independent candidacies. True, Virginia may not be typical--one senator, Harry F. Byrd Jr., was elected as an independent in 1970--but this double breakdown of party loyalty may be prophetic nationally.

For example, Jesse Jackson’s current refusal to rule out an independent presidential bid in 1996 adds to Wilder’s demonstration that African Americans are losing their traditional commitment to the Democrats. Meanwhile, the GOP’s dilemma in keeping its moderates in harness with religious conservatives, populists and nationalists goes far beyond North. Americans, as a whole, continue to tell pollsters what they started saying during the 1992 Ross Perot hubbub--this country needs a new third party.

The GOP’s problem, of course, is that keeping its preachers and populists in a common formation with its financial, corporate and lobbying insiders is a high-wire act. The GOP was shaken by related tremors in 1988 and 1992: first, when religious broadcaster Pat Robertson sought the presidential nomination; then, four years later, with Patrick J. Buchanan’s primary challenge to George Bush, and then by Perot’s ability to draw off a fatal number of predominantly Republican voters in the general election.

Not surprisingly, intra-GOP divisions have worsened since Bush left the White House--just as the fissures within the Democratic Party widened after it lost power in 1968. The key is if the GOP’s religious right feels taken for granted, much as the Democrats’ racial, ethnic and cultural minorities did back in the 1960s and 1970s--both groups neglected by a party Establishment eager for their votes, but even more worried about a backlash from too close an identification.

The last few years have made religious-right strategists shrewder. They won’t try again for the party presidential nomination. Instead, they’re digging in at the grass-roots level, taking over school boards and local GOP organizations and dropping hints that if their agendas are ignored, Christian conservatives could go for an independent movement in 1996.

Whether North wins or loses, his 1994 Senate bid has to be seen as a strategic litmus. The Republicans won Virginia’s 1993 statewide elections, aided by about 75% support from the state’s population of white, Christian churchgoers.

But there was one conspicuous failure. The party candidate for lieutenant governor, Michael Farris, a religious-right supporter, got only 45% of the total statewide vote because such Establishment GOP leaders as Sen. John W. Warner refused to support him and implicitly agreed with his characterization as an extremist. This infuriated religious-right leaders. Now, with Warner and other GOP centrists taking the same hostile approach to North, a watershed could be at hand: Some of these people are not going to be able to stay in the same tent.

For the GOP’s problem does not end with Virginia. The religious right represents a huge pivotal chunk of the party rank and file. Indeed, by some calculations, in 1992, born-again white Christians cast about one-third of the national votes for Bush. Fundamentalists alone cast one in five. Like gays and other minorities on the Democratic side, white Christian conservatives are now dedicated to proving their muscle--most prominently by taking over Republican party organizations and conventions in some 15 to 20 different states.

These are not just Southern or Bible Belt strongholds like South Carolina, Oklahoma or Virginia. In recent years, the religious right has taken over the state GOP or parts of it in the Midwest--including Michigan, Minnesota and Iowa--and in the Pacific Northwest.

The struggle also extends to some of the biggest states. In Texas, religious conservatives are poised to take over this month’s GOP state convention. In Pennsylvania, religious conservatives won 40% of the state committee posts on the ballot two years ago, and made additional gains in this year’s balloting. These Texas and Pennsylvania trends aren’t local minutiae. Equally to the point, religious-right voters turn out with an enthusiasm and commitment that often makes their candidate run ahead of poll indications.

But there’s also a drawback. When the Christian right takes over state GOP organizations, it scares moderate voters away. The same thing often happens when religious-right stalwarts win party nominations. Even this year, one or two U.S. Senate seats and a half-dozen House seats could be lost that way.

If this schism within the GOP turns into a full-fledged split, it could do as much damage as the Democrats’ division did in the 1960s and ‘70s. North isn’t just another candidate. What happens to him this year--and how the national GOP Establishment deals with him--will tell us much about both the politics of culture and the future of the Republican Party in the 1990s. So far, the hand-grenade scenario looks like an even bet.*