The Sound of Guns Being Loaded

The typical fate of political party platforms is to be filed and forgotten the day after they are adopted, but this year’s Republican platform seems all but certain to provide a rare and noisy departure from custom.

The reason is, of course, the party’s plank on abortion. The current platform, adopted when George Bush was renominated for president in 1992, condemns abortion and calls for a constitutional amendment to override the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision that made it legal nationwide. This year’s platform drafters intend to repeat that plank.

That’s fine with Bob Dole, the party’s expected nominee, who says he has always opposed abortion. But Dole also insists on plainly stating the party’s “tolerance” of those who hold differing views. And just to make sure the point isn’t obscured, he wants that tolerance expressed right in the statement on abortion, rather than in the platform’s preamble. That determination has called down on Dole the wrath of the GOP’s most outspoken opponents of abortion.

Dole’s course is guided by cold political calculation. Most Americans, including many Republicans, do not favor outlawing the termination of dangerous or unwanted pregnancies. This year, as in other recent elections, a majority of women have indicated they’re not inclined to vote for the candidate with the more restrictive position on abortion. Dole, lagging President Clinton in the polls by 15 or more points, knows he must have moderate Republican and independent votes, not least women, if he hopes to win in November. From all signs he’s willing to risk a messy convention fight on the abortion plank’s wording.

What may be shaping up, then, is the kind of knock-down convention battle that Democrats used to wage when Democratic civil rights activists tried to get the party on record against poll taxes in the segregated South. There’s even the chance that Pat Buchanan, who says Dole’s position represents “the negation and destruction of our party’s pro-life stand,” might bolt to a third party if Dole gets his way. But for the presumptive candidate not to get his way would be a staggering repudiation.

Dole wants to reach out to the moderates whose votes he must have. Foes of abortion insist there can be no compromise over a moral principle. The battle lines are being drawn, and the big guns are being loaded and aimed.