GOP Criticism of Dole’s Abortion Remarks Grows

Bickering among Republicans about their party’s future ideological direction intensified once again Tuesday as both Patrick J. Buchanan and leading Republican moderates, including Gov. Pete Wilson, criticized Bob Dole’s latest statements on abortion.

Meanwhile, in a television interview, Dole strongly downplayed the possibility that he would choose retired Gen. Colin L. Powell as his running mate--another subject on which party conservatives have been angry of late.

“It’s very doubtful” Powell would join the ticket, Dole said in an interview on the “CBS Evening News.” “My view is that he made this decision when he made the announcement earlier--or last year.

“When he said he didn’t want . . . to participate in elective politics in 1996, in my view that covered everything, not just the presidency but the vice presidency--elective politics.”

Dole and Powell met Saturday at a fund-raiser in Virginia for Republican Sen. John W. Warner. Before that meeting, a close friend and advisor to Powell said, “it’s not 99%, it’s 100%” that Powell would refuse a spot on the ticket. Asked Tuesday if the assessment still stood, the advisor said it did.

Many Dole strategists have been hoping that Powell could be persuaded to join the ticket, and some had interpreted Dole’s attempts to conciliate party moderates on issues such as abortion as being an attempt to placate the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

On abortion, Dole hoped last week that he had put the issue behind him. His proposal was to preserve the existing party platform language on the issue, which calls for a constitutional amendment to ban all abortions, but add a “declaration for tolerance” that would acknowledge a diversity of opinions within the party.

That proposal briefly seemed to have a chance of causing a truce in the party. But activists on both sides of the issue quickly began fighting over the seemingly arcane, but symbolically important, issue of precisely where in the platform the proposed tolerance language should go.

Last week, Dole campaign aides told reporters that Dole had agreed with antiabortion activists that the tolerance statement should be placed in the preamble to the platform, where it would apply to all planks. But in televised interviews Monday and Tuesday, Dole said the statement should be directly added to the abortion section of the platform.

That latest statement provided the opening for Buchanan, who has cast himself as the champion of GOP conservatives. But Buchanan quickly broadened the debate to cover the issue of Dole’s running mate and the party’s position on affirmative action as well.

“We will oppose efforts either to make our party a mirror image of Mr. Clinton’s on abortion or affirmative action; or to consign our party’s future to an heir apparent--untested in the primaries--who seems closer to Mr. Clinton on the social issues than he does to Republicanism or conservatism,” Buchanan said, clearly referring to Powell.

In addition to Buchanan, the man picked by Dole to head the party’s platform-writing committee also expressed reservations about the presumptive nominee’s latest position.

“I much prefer” putting the tolerance language in the preamble, Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) told CNN. “So we’re going to have a long talk--all of us--and work this out.”

Hyde is a longtime opponent of abortion who was picked for the platform job in large part because Dole and his aides believed his presence would reassure conservatives.

On the other side of the spectrum, Gov. Wilson and Massachusetts Gov. William F. Weld, both of whom support abortion rights, said they were still not satisfied and would push for more changes in the platform.

Dole’s proposal is an improvement over the existing platform, but “I would argue strenuously that perhaps the best plank [on abortion] would be none,” Wilson said. Rather than any statement on abortion, the governor said he wanted to propose platform language on “the larger problem of the social pathology that is unfolding of unwanted pregnancy.”

Republicans of all ideological hues “all agree there are many, too many, abortions in the United States, and we should address the circumstances that create that,” such as teenage pregnancies, Wilson said.

In Massachusetts, Weld, a close friend of Wilson, also criticized Dole’s position. “One throwaway line in the plank is nowhere good enough, as far as Gov. Weld is concerned,” a spokesman said.

Dole appeared to show some irritation over the continued dispute on the issue. In another television interview, this one with an ABC affiliate in Kansas City, Dole lashed out at criticism by conservative activist Gary Bauer. Dole recalled women in Connecticut who showed up at a recent rally wearing buttons proclaiming “pro-choice” and “pro-Dole.” Asking rhetorically if he should reject their support because “Gary Bauer doesn’t like it,” Dole snapped: “Give me a break.”

Buchanan, who was Dole’s most persistent opponent in the battle for the GOP nomination, said he did not contest the verdict of the voters who gave Dole the vast majority of the delegates. Nevertheless, he said Dole’s victory did not give him the right to change the well-established party position in opposition to abortion. “Simply because Bill Clinton is stealing our ideas and issues is no argument for us trying to steal his,” Buchanan said.

Times staff writer Dave Lesher in Sacramento contributed to this story.