GOP Convention Opens to Themes of Unity, Tax Cuts

Republicans opened their national convention Monday with a scripted message of unity, tax cuts and economic growth on their lips and their eyes on Bob Dole’s underdog race for the White House.

They saluted their only living symbol of unvarnished national electoral success, the ailing Ronald Reagan, who appeared by videotape. And they heard in person from their two other most-recent Republican presidents, Gerald R. Ford and George Bush, who were turned out of office by the voters.

They also welcomed as a more recently commissioned Republican Colin L. Powell, the retired Army general who joined their party last November but turned away from welling interest across the spectrum of U.S. voters and refused calls that he seek the presidency.

Dole’s final competitor for the party’s presidential nomination, Patrick J. Buchanan, waited until the last moment--as the convention was just getting started--to formally abandon his own quest for the presidency. Buchanan’s campaign, after a strong start fueled by opposition to abortion, immigration, and affirmative action, faded into also-ran status by mid-March.

Grudgingly, Buchanan endorsed Dole and his running mate, Jack Kemp, in their fight against the Democratic administration, saying: “The one, the only realistic chance we have in 1996 to implement the agenda for which we campaigned for 18 months is to keep Congress Republican and replace Clinton-Gore with a Republican administration. Therefore, I endorse the Republican ticket of Dole-Kemp and will work for a Republican victory in November.”

Showing no enthusiasm for the GOP candidates themselves, Buchanan touted instead the conservative platform on which they will run, saying in a press release, “Its embrace by the Republican Party is a triumph of our campaign, a vindication of our decision not to quit this race.”

Typically laconic, Dole smiled upon learning of Buchanan’s announcement and said, “We’re happy to have that.”

Buchanan’s endorsement came the day after he had headlined a rally of his backers and called on them to honor a “temporary truce” with the GOP establishment. But in that Sunday speech, Buchanan avoided mentioning Dole.

On the first of its four days at the San Diego convention center overlooking San Diego Bay, the quadrennial gathering of Republicans had the look not so much of an august political experience of citizens exercising the rights of democracy--a look that, to be sure, has been fast fading in recent decades--as that of an old-fashioned variety show.

Seeking--and achieving--a new look intended to hold the interest of television audiences, convention organizers spliced entertainment into the steady stream of speeches. Speakers were hurried onto the podium--some given only 90 seconds for their monologues--in a pace that mimicked that of televised entertainment and news shows.

Approval of Platform

In their opening session, the delegates approved by acclamation their party’s platform--a document that is typically dropped into filing cabinets and ignored until the next presidential election, regardless of the controversy it my initially engender.

Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour called for the ayes; the delegates responded overwhelmingly. He called for the nays, got no audible dissent and, after a nanosecond, declared the document approved.

The platform adheres to many of the ideas Buchanan promoted. It voices the party’s strong support of a constitutional ban on abortion, endorses California’s controversial Proposition 209 calling for an end to ethnic and gender-based affirmative action programs in government and calls for denying automatic American citizenship to U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants.

Rep. Henry J. Hyde of Illinois, the chairman of the platform committee, discounted GOP critics when he introduced the document for ratification.

This was the moment at which Gov. Pete Wilson and other Republican supporters of abortion rights had threatened to launch their longshot floor fight to include language in the platform that would support a woman’s right to abort a pregnancy. Such a fight was averted when Dole agreed to attach the language as an appendix, while maintaining strong opposition to abortion in the platform itself.

Hyde proclaimed: “They said we would dissolve in discord. But here we are, strong in unity. . . . We come together when our country needs us. And my brothers and sisters, does our country need us now.”

Reaganite Appeal

From its videotaped glimpse of the 85-year-old Reagan, suffering from Alzheimer’s disease--followed by brief remarks by former First Lady Nancy Reagan--to a message of economic and social renewal, the convention has been designed to appeal to the voters who, 16 years ago, sent Reagan to the White House and overwhelmingly returned him there four years later.

But in so doing, it also drew attention to the contrast between the Reagan era and the current political landscape in the final years of the century, leaving open the question: Can the Republicans find a message in 1996 that will have the allure of its anti-communist, tax-cut script of 1980?

And can they do so without Reagan’s allure?

Just as Democrats, who adhered to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal Depression-era themes for 40 years after his final election in 1944 and were unable to score consecutive wins in presidential races, the Republicans are struggling to revive the coalition of blue-collar Democrats, social conservatives of both parties and tax-cutting economic supply-siders that gave them 12 years in the White House until Clinton defeated Bush four years ago.

California Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren, asked to introduce the tax-cutting economic plan that Dole recently made the centerpiece of his campaign, said the program was “faithful to the agenda Ronald Reagan inspired.”

“We embrace an agenda for meaningful growth, quality jobs and boundless opportunity for every American,” Lungren said. “We believe in empowering the American people by cutting taxes for American families, providing incentives for job creation and economic growth and eliminating wasteful government programs and balancing the budget.”

As the convention moved methodically, if unemotionally, through the early business of approving the platform and gave passing attention to a quick-flowing podium-parade of governors and lesser-known politicians, Dole spent the day mostly out of the spotlight.

He learned of Buchanan’s endorsement during a late-morning speech--his only public appearance--to several hundred employees at Solar Turbines, a San Diego manufacturer of industrial gas turbines. When an aide slipped him a note, he smiled.

Later, Dole told reporters: “We’d like to leave here united and it appears that we will.”

With a nod to the roots of the Buchanan campaign and the desire to lure voters worried about their economic future--Dole said, “I think he did have a message when it came to job security and some of the trade areas . . . we’re happy to have him on board.”

New Campaign Slogan

The former Kansas senator, clearly energized and casually attired in khakis and a checked, mustard-colored jacket, tailored his appeal to independents, Democrats, and potential supporters of the Reform Party founded by Ross Perot. “Take a look at us,” he urged, offering up his new campaign slogan: “A better man for a better America.”

On the podium, meanwhile, the speakers focused on drawing contrasts between Democrats in the White House and the Republicans. The pace was lively. Sixty-five events were listed for the evening session alone; they were precisely scheduled to last three hours and 41 minutes and to fill television prime time on the East Coast.

The speakers peppered their speeches with tales from constituents intended to highlight what Dole had accomplished as Senate majority leader but also to reinforce the party’s complaints that government has grown too large and intrusive.

Even the convention center’s interior design was drawn up to humanize the gathering: The speaker’s low-slung podium is considerably less imposing than the multistory structures of past national conventions. But the convention is an awkward fit in such a hall, its ceiling less than 30 feet high, the network anchors’ sky boxes sitting just off the floor, and the podium midway down the long side of the rectangular floor, with delegates and their guests spread far to either side.

A more significantly awkward fit, however, may be the economic program on which Dole and Kemp are running: a 15% cut in Americans’ tax rates even as the GOP candidates insist on additional cuts in federal spending to eliminate the budget deficit.

No less loyal a Republican than Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato of New York, who spearheaded Dole’s big primary win in that state, raised questions about the proposal in a radio interview Monday.

The only solution, he said, may be to take the politically horrifying step of cutting Social Security recipients’ cost-of-living increases and reducing Medicare payments to the elderly. But that, said D’Amato, was not an idea that should pass Dole’s lips now.

“I would never say it if I were him until after the election. No way. I mean, I’m not running this year, so I can say it and tell the truth,” he said on the Don Imus radio show.

Lure for Demonstrators

The presence of the 1,990 delegates, and many more journalists, drew demonstrators supporting, and opposing, a multitude of causes to a parking lot turned protest zone across trolley tracks from the convention center. The area, surrounded by a specially installed chain-link fence bears stark red signs warning: “All persons entering are subject to search for firearms or explosives.”

In the morning, a crowd estimated at 400 by San Diego police marched from the city’s Chicano Park through the Gaslamp Quarter toward the convention center to protest what they characterized as the Republican Party’s anti-immigrant stance.

Times staff writers Edwin Chen, Dave Lesher, Gebe Martinez, Tony Perry, Jeffrey Rabin and Elizabeth Shogren contributed to this story.