GOP Urged to Focus on ‘94, Avoid Intra-Party Squabbles : Politics: Republican chairman says ideological battles should be dealt with later. Dissension centers on abortion issue, religious conservatives.

Against a backdrop of increasing dissension by moderate Republican leaders, the national Republican hierarchy gathered in Los Angeles Thursday intent on burying its nascent problems and celebrating a mounting optimism about the party’s prospects this November.

Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour, speaking to reporters as the twice-yearly gathering began, sent a strong signal to his GOP brethren to keep their attention riveted on 1994 and leave until later any contentious battles over ideology.

“The focus has to be on 1994,” he said. “The best thing that we can do to elect a Republican President in 1996 is to have a big Republican victory in 1994. . . . We’ll worry about 1996 and all that after Nov. 8.”

Republican prospects, indeed, are far sunnier now than might have been imagined after the party’s thundering losses in 1992, which saw the election of the first Democratic President in 12 years and sweeps by the perennially losing Democrats in many states, particularly California.

Barbour estimated that 175 House seats, out of a total of 435, are up for grabs this year, and he insisted that the current Democratic majorities in the House and Senate are threatened. He said he believes that Republicans could walk away with more seats than they have held in more than a generation.

“I think it is reasonable to expect that we may be able to put together working control, working majorities in the House on many issues,” said Barbour. He added that while it is conceivable that Republicans could win an outright majority, that scenario was “unlikely.”

In the Senate, where the retirement of several Democrats has opened up more balanced battles than could have been predicted, Republicans would have to gain seven seats to take control. “That is uphill but it is not nearly as uphill as it was in the beginning of the year,” he added.

The party of the President traditionally loses congressional seats in the midterm elections, but Republican hopes have been fanned this year by a host of occurrences.

President Clinton himself--broadly unpopular in many areas of the country, though still seen favorably in California--has emerged as the Republicans’ greatest electoral weapon. In addition, voters this year have increasingly seized on issues that traditionally are in the GOP domain.

“The issues have helped Republicans in every election this year and last year: crime, taxes, welfare reform and spending,” he said.

But the Republicans are not without their own problems, which Barbour and other GOP leaders hope to discuss only minimally during the three-day Los Angeles meeting.

Moderate Republicans have been grumbling about the growing prominence of religious conservatives. So far, most of the discontent has surfaced in disputes about the party’s anti-abortion stance. In recent weeks two Republican governors--California’s Pete Wilson and Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey--each have called for the deletion of the anti-abortion plank in the GOP’s 1996 platform.

Those pronouncements, by leaders of two of the biggest electoral states, may presage a huge battle over the issue in 1996.

Barbour, clearly seeking to avoid any intra-party squabbles before November, issued a conciliatory appeal to Republicans on all sides of the abortion issue.

“Gov. Whitman and Gov. Wilson’s positions as pro-choice have widely been known and I think it’s fine for them to have their positions,” he said. “In our party, there are millions and millions of good pro-choice Republicans. I’m pro-life, but they’re just as good of Republicans as I am.”

Barbour added later: “I don’t see any benefit to try to speculate about something that is not going to happen till 1996.”

The Los Angeles session will have a distinct flavor of 1996, however, when it comes to those planning to speak to RNC members.

Among the prospective 1996 presidential candidates scheduled to speak are Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole, former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, Massachusetts Gov. William F. Weld and Wilson, who was due to attend Saturday morning.

California Senate candidate Michael Huffington, the Santa Barbara congressman who is battling incumbent Dianne Feinstein, is scheduled to speak today.