GOP Bid Won’t Be Easy for Powell, Experts Say : Politics: Retired general faces hurdles despite high poll ratings. His moderate views won’t sit well with conservatives, the strategists point out.

From his office in Texas, veteran anti-abortion-rights activist Bill Price has watched the media and political frenzy over retired Gen. Colin L. Powell with a mixture of amazement and anger.

Like everyone else, Price doesn’t know whether Powell will run for President. But Price, the longtime president of Texans United for Life, thinks he has a pretty good idea of what might be awaiting Powell if he decides to run as a Republican.

“The conservative interest groups would pull out every possible stop they possibly could to prevent him from coming out of the Republican primaries as the nominee,” he said.

A Powell victory, Price added, “would be the end of the [Ronald] Reagan revolution. It would be a return to the Nelson Rockefeller wing of the party. And the conservative wing of the party would absolutely not stand for it.”

Although the prospect of a Powell bid for the GOP nomination has drawn an enthusiastic response from some conservative national party strategists who view him as the party’s strongest general-election candidate against President Clinton, Price’s remarks suggest some of the enormous ideological hurdles that the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff could face if he actually enters the Republican race.

Many political professionals who have spoken recently with Powell advisers say they believe that he has virtually ruled out running as an independent and is focusing his attention on whether to seek the GOP nomination. These party operatives say that Kenneth M. Duberstein, a former White House chief of staff advising Powell, has been quietly seeking guidance on both the logistics and the political terrain of the GOP race. Party sources say that veteran GOP pollster Robert M. Teeter, who ran then-President George Bush’s reelection committee in 1992, is among those who have been in touch with Duberstein and could join a Powell campaign if he enters the race.

The rustling of activity around Powell, still in the midst of the book tour for his best-selling autobiography, is sharpening discussion among Republicans about his potential influence on the GOP race.

For example, presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan, a conservative commentator, hinted last week that he might run as a third-party candidate in 1996 if anyone other than one of the most conservative contenders wins the party’s nomination--remarks widely interpreted as a warning to Powell.

Since starting his book promotions last month, Powell has spoken in favor of gun control, legalized abortion and affirmative action, and in opposition to school prayer and aspects of the Republican welfare reform plan. He has also repeatedly described himself as a “moderate.” In his autobiography, Powell calls himself “a fiscal conservative with a social conscience.”

These views place Powell at the center of public opinion, and make him arguably well-positioned for an independent presidential run. But many of these positions also set him into direct conflict with the energized conservative activists at the core of the GOP’s electoral coalition. Gary Bauer, a leading social conservative, recently circulated a memo arguing that “the liberal Establishment . . . sees Powell as the way to stop the conservative revolution.”

If he ran as a Republican, Powell would thus face the type of challenge that confronted Clinton in the 1992 Democratic contest: persuading a primary electorate dominated by ideologically ardent activists to accept deviations from their orthodoxy in the hope of increasing the party’s prospects in the general election.

“The question,” said one source close to Powell, “is whether the Republican primary [voter] wants to win back the White House or enforce ideological purity.”

Clinton was able to sell the need for change largely because losses in five of the six previous presidential elections had opened many Democrats to trying something new. But Powell would be asking the GOP to undertake a sharp ideological U-turn back toward the center at a moment when many Republicans believe that conservative ideas are ascendant.

“If he emphasizes that he’s a moderate and he wants to represent the middle, he’ll have a very difficult time of it,” said Republican pollster Fred Steeper. “If he decides to articulate the conservative agenda in his own way, he’ll push [front-runner] Bob Dole right to the brink.”

If Powell runs, his greatest asset would likely be his public stature. As last week’s lackluster GOP presidential forum in New Hampshire made clear, none of the candidates except Dole, the Senate majority leader, has established a clear and compelling public identity. And many party analysts consider even Dole’s support thin.

With a compelling personal story, an image of stability and strength, and favorability ratings that substantially exceed Dole’s or Clinton’s in recent polls, Powell would instantly cast a large shadow in the Republican race.

Recent surveys in Iowa and New Hampshire show him running even with or a strong second to Dole, and those numbers would probably rise initially in the hurricane of media attention a Powell candidacy would provoke. One Republican strategist who has spoken with Powell’s advisers argues that a Powell campaign could generate so much excitement that sheer momentum might sweep him toward the nomination in a process akin to “spontaneous combustion.”

But many others in the party believe that over time the personal attraction to Powell would be outweighed by resistance to his moderate views. Polls show that self-described conservatives outnumber moderates in GOP primaries by margins of 2 to 1 or 3 to 1. That imbalance would not be so much of a problem for Powell in the first contests because with many candidates in the race, it will be possible to win with as little as a third of the vote or less.

But even if Powell broke through in the early primaries, the most likely scenario is that he would eventually be forced to run one-on-one against a candidate to his right, such as Dole or Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas. And at that point, many party analysts argue, the sheer ideological tilt of the primary electorate would leave Powell running uphill.

Said Karl Rove, one of the party’s leading conservative strategists: “We are on the march, talking about limiting government and reducing spending. And none of that is consistent with a message that says we should sand down the message and paint with pastels.”

Moreover, a Powell candidacy would face one great imponderable: No one can say for sure how many white voters in the end would refuse to vote for an African American presidential candidate, especially in the most conservative states.

Those who want Powell to run as a Republican pin many of their hopes on changing the composition of the GOP electorate by attracting more independents and Democrats to cross over and vote in the primaries. Twenty-seven states allow some kind of crossover voting in their primaries. But historically, few candidates in either party have lured large numbers of voters across the line.

“It’s like saying all the fish are going to walk on the Earth,” said Mike Murphy, the chief strategist for GOP candidate Lamar Alexander. “There are two kinds of animals: Democrats and Republicans. The reason people vote in Republican primaries is they are Republicans.”

Even some sympathetic to Powell agree that no matter how many new voters he attracts, he is unlikely to win the nomination if he cannot neutralize opposition from the powerful conservative interest groups hostile to his positions on abortion and gun control--not to mention his refusal to rule out raising taxes as part of a deficit-reduction plan. Groups such as the Christian Coalition and the National Rifle Assn. “are persuasive enough in the Republican primary that they can deny you the nomination” if they are actively against you, Steeper said.

The issue is less whether such groups support Powell than whether they mobilize against him as intensely as Price predicts.

Former Education Secretary William J. Bennett, a leading GOP voice on social issues, insists that Powell could dilute opposition from religious conservatives by delivering a broad message of personal responsibility and promising to “discourage . . . and restrict abortion” while maintaining its legality. Bennett has publicly praised Powell, and privately sent Duberstein a package of information on how to discuss abortion in a manner more acceptable to social conservatives.

Gun owners--who polls show constitute almost half of all GOP primary voters--present another potential hurdle. Although the NRA has been quiet about a potential Powell candidacy, Tanya Metaksa, the group’s chief political operative, says that since Powell revealed he supported a waiting period for gun purchases, “I’m getting a lot of negative reaction from our people to his comments.”

She added: “There are a lot of groups . . . who might not be too enthusiastic if he runs.”

But one Republican operative sympathetic to Powell believes that even if the NRA and social conservative groups opposed him, his military background might allow him to attract many of their members. “These groups,” said the operative, “have never tried before to fight a guy who was a general and a chairman of the joint chiefs.”