Dole, GOP Platform Chief Fail to Resolve Party’s Abortion Dispute

GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole apparently failed to reach agreement Friday with his handpicked Republican platform committee chairman over how to handle a proposed “declaration of tolerance” welcoming abortion supporters into the fold.

Dole met for about an hour with Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.), who will oversee this year’s GOP platform, but neither man made himself available afterward to a throng of reporters outside Dole’s Capitol Hill campaign headquarters.

Nelson Warfield, Dole’s spokesman, later issued a statement saying that Dole and Hyde “are confident that the 1996 platform will unite the Republican Party by offering a solid blueprint for a stronger, safer, more prosperous America.”

He said the two men “reiterated” their “strongly held views” against abortions and that they “agree that the Republican Party must recognize that there is a diversity of views among Republicans on this and other issues.”

However, Warfield’s statement did not address the issue that Republicans have been arguing about for the past two weeks--where in the platform the declaration should be placed.

Dole has said he wants the language attached to the abortion plank itself, but Hyde has previously expressed opposition to that idea. He and other conservatives have called for the declaration to be placed in the preamble--so it can be interpreted to cover all issues on which Republicans may disagree, rather than singling out abortion.

One potential compromise, some campaign advisors and Republican sources said, may be inclusion of a “declaration of tolerance” in other planks as well.