Irked Delegates See Convention Tilted to Middle

Angered by the decision of party leaders to shine the spotlight on moderate, photogenic, abortion-rights advocates this week, some delegates to the Republican convention had a warning for television viewers: Don’t believe what you see.

“I think it is a completely orchestrated, staged event to appeal to the swing voters watching the TV,” grumbled John Van Sandt, a delegate from Alabama.

Van Sandt was one of many conservative GOP delegates who contend their views have been muffled during their own convention in a carefully engineered strategy to lure a broader spectrum of Americans to vote for Bob Dole.

Americans should not be fooled into thinking that the GOP is moderating to look more like Rep. Susan Molinari (R-N.Y.) or retired Gen. Colin L. Powell, the conservative delegates said. In fact, in state after state, the Republican Party is becoming more conservative, they said.

As evidence, they say, just take a careful look at the party platform, a document that is to the right of past versions, and pay attention to the fact that the winners of three recent GOP Senate primaries have been the more conservative, antiabortion candidates.

“There’s a disconnect between the platform and the image projected at the convention,” said Karen Johnson, 55, an Arizona delegate who was especially angry that Molinari gave the keynote address Tuesday night. “This is the image the hierarchy of the party wants to project to reach out to more voters.”

But Johnson and others were skeptical that the plan would work.

“I think it’s a terrible strategy,” Allen Unruh, a South Dakota delegate, said as he stood on the convention floor Tuesday night. “You’ve got to stand up for what you believe in.”

In an effort to try to appear inclusive and to attract more women, minorities and other swing voters, the party establishment is risking alienating some of its most active foot soldiers.

“They’re tolerant to everybody except the conservative wing of the party--and we’re the majority,” added Unruh, who was the chairman of Patrick J. Buchanan’s primary campaign in his state. “It’s a slap in the face.”

Most infuriating to the conservatives is the fact that the party leadership reserved its premier speaking slots for Molinari and Powell--both moderate, abortion-rights Republicans--but that no leaders of the antiabortion wing received such invitations to address the convention and, more significantly, the Americans watching at home.

Despite the grumbling in the ranks, conservative leaders, including Christian Coalition Executive Director Ralph Reed, said they were comfortable with their backseat roles during the public spectacle as long as the party platform reflected their views.

“What we are willing to do is to allow the party to do what its job is, and that is to put on a winning convention,” Reed said Wednesday. “Our job was to ensure that the party remained pro-life and pro-family, and we did our job.”

Patrick Hagan, a delegate from Virginia, agreed with Reed and said he knows what he will tell anyone who has seen the convention and believes the party has taken a moderate turn: “You have the wrong idea. Look at the platform; look at the leadership,” said Hagan, a retired CIA senior intelligence analyst. The best proof of where the party is, he and other conservatives argued, is the platform, which calls for, among other things:

* A constitutional amendment to make abortion illegal.

* A constitutional amendment to remove automatic citizenship for children born in America to some noncitizens.

* The denial of government benefits for U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants.

* The discontinuation of cash assistance from states to unmarried teenage mothers, in a plank that calls “illegitimacy the most serious cause of poverty.”

* An end to affirmative action.

“It truly is a Buchanan platform in a lot of respects,” said Mary Summa, a North Carolina delegate who was on the committee drafting the platform.

The fact that conservative, antiabortion candidates won GOP Senate primaries in Georgia, Michigan and Kansas earlier this month indicates that the grass-roots troops are winning the battle, she said, no matter who speaks at the convention.

Other conservative delegates defended the attempt to soften the party’s image to attract more people during the convention--its biggest public show.

“I have confidence that people sympathetic to the Christian Coalition represent the majority of the party, so I don’t think we need to be on prime time,” said Don Evanson, a Minnesota delegate who owns a small public works contracting firm.

Evanson, who has been involved in party politics for 20 years, agreed that the image projected from the podium does not match the reality of where the Republican Party is now, but he thinks this is a good strategy.

“I hope we can get those who are on the periphery into the party, and then we can make them more conservative,” Evanson said.

Although disappointed that their ideological leaders were not on center stage, many conservatives said they were glad to see so many black, Latino and female Republicans on the podium.

Gene Ryder, a 63-year-old delegate from Texas, said that their appearance may not have been a good representation of the party’s makeup, but he suggested the ideological bent of the speakers was more misleading.

“In an effort to try to show how welcome the moderate group is, it seems as if they’re going overboard and have presented an image to the public that is more moderate than the count of the delegates would show,” Ryder said. “I think it’s an honest effort . . . but it does project a bit of a wrong image.”

The speeches, he added, have focused on the noncontroversial positions of the party, such as cutting taxes and supporting families, instead of such issues as fighting the moral crisis in America, bringing prayer back into schools and making abortion illegal.

People should know, he said, that if Dole wins and the Republicans continue to hold majorities in Congress, there will be a major effort to reverse some of the changes that have been made in America over the last four decades, when Democrats controlled either the White House or at least one chamber of Congress.