GOP’s Battle Reaffirms Strength of Abortion Foes

Bob Dole indicted sex and violence in the movies. Phil Gramm decried out-of-wedlock births. Steve Forbes urged a long-term campaign to shift public opinion.

Yet as each of the presidential candidates tried to find a way to sidestep the abortion issue, he found that for a significant percentage of the Republican primary electorate, there was no substitute to pledging support for a ban.

After a campaign that began with virtually none of the leading Republicans eager to discuss abortion--with several, in fact, urging the party to reduce its emphasis or seek new approaches on the issue--the battle for the GOP nomination has reestablished the central position of antiabortion activists within the GOP coalition, many analysts say.

In rapid fire, religious conservatives opposed to abortion fueled the rise of Patrick J. Buchanan, helped sink the candidacies of Gramm, Forbes and former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander--and then helped Dole turn back Buchanan’s surge.

The prominence of social conservatives in settling the nomination struggle has left Dole, the presumptive GOP nominee, with a difficult choice. On the one hand, polls show that most Americans--even most Republicans who voted in the primaries--oppose the absolute ban on abortion that the GOP platform now advocates. Some around Dole, sensitive to those sentiments, still hold out hope for softening the party’s platform or selecting a running mate who supports abortion rights.

But the formidable show of organizational muscle from antiabortion activists during the primaries suggests that Dole could face a crippling internecine war if he moves down either of those paths. Indeed, even some party leaders who have called for moderating the platform plank now say the battle should be deferred.

“I don’t see a major fight over this at the convention,” said former Education Secretary William J. Bennett, a leading advocate of changing the platform. Likewise, Forbes--who clashed with social conservatives over his refusal to urge an immediate ban on abortion--said in an interview after quitting the race that “it is not realistic to expect” change in the platform.

Not all advocates of change are so pessimistic. Ann Stone, chairwoman of Republicans for Choice, notes that in every state a plurality or majority of GOP primary voters opposed the platform’s current call for a complete ban on abortion. Dole, she says, could still reach out to those voters, either with the platform or a running mate.

Yet antiabortion activists almost universally believe that the course of the GOP primaries has strengthened their hand. Antiabortion forces today “are in an unbelievably stronger position within the GOP,” said Jeff Bell, a longtime Republican strategist and abortion opponent.

The increased focus on abortion during the GOP presidential race reversed the tide of conservative politics during the past three years. Since 1992, most Republicans had generally sought to steer the cultural debate away from abortion.

Behind that shift lay a political calculation: After George Bush’s defeat, many Republican strategists concluded that the party had frightened away moderates by emphasizing culturally conservative themes at the 1992 convention.

That conclusion propelled two new lines of thinking within conservative circles.

Along one track, many conservatives sought to shift the debate away from abortion and school prayer toward cultural issues with more tangible, daily impact on the lives of most Americans. At the top of that list was the surge in out-of-wedlock births, the links between crime and the decline of the two-parent family, and what Bennett often called “the coarsening” of the popular culture with sex and violence.

In 1994, the House Republicans’ “contract with America” marked the new emphasis. The contract called for welfare reform that attempted to discourage illegitimacy and a new crackdown on crime, but it remained conspicuously silent on school prayer or abortion.

At the same time, a small but influential group of conservative thinkers promoted a new approach to abortion. This group--which included Bennett; his frequent ally William Kristol, now publisher of the Weekly Standard magazine, and conservative social policy analyst Marvin Olasky--argued that the push for a constitutional amendment banning abortion was not only impractical but counterproductive because it frightened away centrist voters who otherwise shared conservatives’ moral qualms about abortion.

Instead, these thinkers argued, the GOP should attempt to reduce the number of abortions with moral persuasion and politically acceptable legal restrictions (such as requiring parental consent before minors can receive abortions) while abandoning the call for a complete ban.

Early in the presidential race, those new approaches seemed to be shaping the discussion. Dole initially said little about abortion and instead courted social conservatives with a widely noted speech accusing Hollywood of undermining traditional values. Gramm spoke about reducing illegitimacy far more than banning abortion. Even Buchanan somewhat downplayed the issue.

Forbes and Alexander carried the new thinking into the presidential campaign. Both declared themselves opposed to abortion but said that they would not seek to ban it at the federal level. Forbes insisted that only a long-term effort to change public opinion could lead to the elimination of abortion.

Gov. Pete Wilson and Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania went a step further, insisting that abortion should remain legal.

But these deviations from party orthodoxy proved untenable as the voting approached.

Both Wilson and Specter withdrew before the first contests, unable to rally measurable support. As Buchanan amplified his antiabortion message early this year, Gramm ramped up his own opposition to abortion--but not in time to prevent a loss to Buchanan in the Louisiana caucus that doomed his candidacy.

Perhaps most revealing, Forbes and Alexander attracted little support--and in many instances overt opposition--from social conservatives in key early states.

Those lessons now influence Dole’s position. So too does Buchanan’s strong performance in the early primary states--and his threat to give Dole “the fight of his life” if he seeks to change the platform or select a running mate who supports abortion rights.

Moreover, Buchanan’s emergence as a leader of grass-roots social conservatives increases the pressure on more pragmatic activists to oppose any concessions to abortion-rights supporters.

At least for now, neither side of the debate sees much likelihood of the party shifting its stance.

“To take the abortion issue out of the party would split it up,” Bell said. That “wasn’t evident a year ago, but it certainly became evident during the course of this thing.”

* ORANGE COUNTY BLUES: Pat Buchanan sees defeat in the conservative stronghold. A17

* RELATED STORY: A5