GOP Powers Lack the Juice to Short-Circuit Buchanan

Ever since New Hampshire gave a huge boost to Patrick J. Buchanan’s presidential campaign, the conservative Republican has invoked ominous images of a mighty GOP establishment conspiring to destroy his candidacy. And at least some supporters of Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole have been hoping for the same thing.

Yet as Buchanan traverses the country, describing how faxes and phones--the modern-day equivalent of the smoke-filled room--are humming with plots to do him in, powerful Republicans are coming to a different conclusion: There is little they can do because the days are long gone when political bosses could anoint slates and stymie dissenters.

“The establishment would be doing something to straighten out this mess if it had the ability to do it,” said William Kristol, a GOP strategist who is editor of the Weekly Standard magazine. “What we have is a lot of people having lunch at the Palm [a restaurant in Washington] saying, ‘We have to do something,’ but they can’t do anything.”

“Even if you wanted to derail him,” said Frank Fahrenkopf, former GOP chairman, “there’s no mechanism within the Republican Party by which to derail a candidate.”

There are, indeed, many Republicans in Washington--party officials, lobbyists and other political operatives--wringing their hands about the effects of Buchanan’s candidacy. But they are deeply divided over what to do, even if they had the power to do it.

So far, their main efforts have been to try to discredit Buchanan as something of a rogue Republican--noting, for instance, that his calls for protectionist trade policies fly in the face of the party’s traditional stance--and wait for the field of candidates to narrow so that more moderate voters will stop dividing their support.

That splintering in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary allowed Buchanan to surge even though he did not muster more than 30% of the total votes.

But even that indirect approach is risky, Republicans acknowledge, because it could alienate Buchanan supporters, raising the prospects that the party’s nominating convention will turn nasty and turn off the voters the party will need to energize in order to beat President Clinton in the fall.

Indeed, the current GOP brawl is just the latest evidence of how impotent leaders of both major political parties have been for at least a generation. If the establishment were able to deliver, for example, Dole would have won New Hampshire, where he had the endorsement of the entire party hierarchy in a tiny state.

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Republican insiders also discount the notion that GOP powers could force out other mainstream Republicans moderates--notably former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander, who pulled 23% of the vote in New Hampshire.

They note that Republican leaders haven’t even been able to clear the field of bottom-tier candidates like Indiana Sen. Richard G. Lugar, who won a meager 5% of the New Hampshire vote.

In truth, “there is no establishment in Washington that can or should try to impose or dictate who our nominee’s going to be,” Haley Barbour, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said Friday.

It wasn’t always so. When parties were stronger, leaders had more control over the process of naming delegates to national nominating conventions.

“When I started in this business, they selected the delegates in the back room and there was no question,” said GOP political consultant Eddie Mahe. “Democracy was an interesting concept that had nothing to do with what happened.”

Now, convention delegates are chosen largely by the voters. And it is hard to imagine any leader having the stature or clout to persuade a candidate to drop out for the sake of minimizing intraparty bloodshed.

Even if there were, it would be difficult to see a candidate responding to an appeal to sacrifice for the good of the party, unless he was already headed for the exits.

“This is each man for himself; this is part of the ‘me’ generation,” said Catherine Rudder, executive director of the American Political Science Assn. “Who does anything for the party anymore?”

This week has seen a flurry of efforts to shore up Dole’s support and to disparage Buchanan. As Dole sought to regain his footing following his surprising loss to Buchanan in New Hampshire, the Kansas senator drew a parade of new endorsements. Those backing him included Senate Majority Whip Trent Lott (R-Miss.), as well as Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), Paul Coverdell (R-Ga.), Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colo.) and Slade Gorton (R-Wash.).

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Dole and his top aides trained their fire on Buchanan, portraying the contest as a fight between the extreme and the mainstream of the GOP. Others joined in the chorus, suggesting that Buchanan’s isolationist and provocative views are too divisive to beat Clinton.

Former Education Secretary William J. Bennett, Alexander’s campaign chairman, came down hard on Buchanan for his trade views. “Pat Buchanan’s version of the Olympics would be South Dakota against South Carolina,” Bennett said Thursday in a speech in Atlanta.

The Weekly Standard, in the issue that appears today, rips into Buchananism as “a corrosive anti-institutional populism that threatens to undo the gains of 1994,” when Republicans seized control of Congress.

Buchanan practically welcomed the attacks. “There’s no doubt that these fellas are playing right into my hands by gathering together and putting on this hysterical performance,” he said Thursday in Arizona.

Immediately after his New Hampshire victory, Buchanan had warned his supporters that the party establishment in Washington would quickly coalesce in opposition to him.

“All the forces of the old order are going to rally against us,” he said. “The establishment is coming together. You can hear them now. The fax machines and the phones are buzzing in Washington, D.C.”

But actually, at a time when practically everyone involved agrees the party is now fighting for its heart and soul, many of its biggest guns have fallen silent. House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and his principal lieutenants in the GOP revolution on Capitol Hill have remained mute--endorsing no candidate, declining invitations to take on Buchanan even though he stands four-square opposed to their positions on many issues, including trade and immigration.

Many GOP leaders are citing a variety of reasons for staying above the fray: Gingrich can’t comment because he hopes to be chairman of the Republican National Convention, aides to House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) said he is mum because he is a leader of the party, and an aide to House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) said he has not endorsed anyone because he really wanted Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas) to be the nominee.

“I’m not going to comment on any individual personality,” Gingrich said Friday after reporters in Atlanta repeatedly sought his comment on Buchanan’s candidacy. “I am convinced that the Republican nominee will be broadly acceptable to the party, and will, in fact, be a far better choice than Bill Clinton.”

But underlying the cautious response is a cold political calculation: Many Republicans don’t want to risk alienating Buchanan supporters.

“They don’t want us to be burning bridges today we’ll regret tomorrow,” said one GOP strategist.

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Some are laying low because they are lukewarm about Dole’s candidacy. A DeLay spokesman, for instance, said of the congressman: “I don’t think he really believes that Dole is as conservative” as himself.

Many Washington insiders made a concerted effort to adopt a “What, me worry?” tone, trying to treat Buchanan’s eventual demise as inevitable.

“There is not panic,” said Republican lobbyist Kenneth M. Duberstein. “There is an overwhelming consensus that Bob Dole is likely to be the Republican nominee. There is virtually unanimous consensus that Pat Buchanan will not be.”

An effort to co-opt some of Buchanan’s issues also was evident.

In what likely will be a model of political diplomacy for other establishment Republicans, Barbour in a speech Friday drew heavily on some of the more popular themes of Buchanan’s campaign while distancing himself from the more divisive ones--without mentioning any GOP candidate by name.

Barbour spoke at length of Republicans’ concern about workers’ stagnant wages, an ever-present Buchanan message, but succinctly differed with the candidate’s trade policy when he said “open markets and free trade are right for America.”

Barbour also sought to deflect attention from intraparty divisions in the speech, which he delivered to the Conservative Political Action Conference, and instead focused on views that unite the GOP.

“The argument in 1996 is not among Republicans,” he said. “It’s remarkable how much our candidates for the nomination agree on, though you wouldn’t know it from reading the paper or watching TV.”

Times senior Washington correspondent Jack Nelson and researcher Edith Stanley in Atlanta contributed to this report.

* DEAD HEAT

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