GOP May Be Following the Wrong Guide in Hunt for Abortion Strategy

Republicans searching the 1997 election results for clues on voter views about abortion may be looking in the wrong place. Since the voting earlier this month, most of the party’s attention has focused on Republican Gov. Christine Todd Whitman’s near-death experience in New Jersey. But the GOP success in the Virginia governor’s race may have more profound implications for the party’s future.

Conservatives maintain that Whitman--who supports abortion rights--suffered such a tight squeeze despite a strong economy because she alienated the party’s social-conservative base. But the voting results don’t support such a sweeping conclusion; if anything, the weight of the evidence suggests that abortion played at most a minor role in Whitman’s troubles. It may have even helped save her in a region trending toward the Democrats.

In Virginia, on the other hand, the winning Republican candidate, James S. Gilmore, pointed the way toward a major reformulation of the abortion issue that could broaden the GOP’s appeal to swing voters uneasy with the practice but unwilling to prohibit it.

While Gilmore declared himself opposed to abortion--and proposed measures to restrict it, such as prohibiting late-term “partial-birth” abortions--he also acknowledged there was no prospect of banning abortion for the foreseeable future. “The truth is,” he insisted in one dramatic commercial, “the Supreme Court has spoken. No one’s going to ban abortions.”

For years, that obvious truth has been dangerous to say out loud in the GOP. Gilmore not only attracted the center but held his base while saying it. His success with a call for reducing--but not now banning--abortion is likely to inspire imitation among Republican candidates in 1998 and the cast of GOP hopefuls in 2000.

So far, however, Republicans are drawing more conclusions, on more ambiguous evidence, from the New Jersey results. There’s no question Whitman pushes the envelope on social issues inside the GOP: Kate Michelman, president of the National Abortion Rights Action League, calls her “the most pro-choice governor in the United States” because she not only supports legalized abortion but vetoed a state bill to ban “partial-birth” abortions.

Conservatives insist that those heresies explain Whitman’s meager 27,000-vote victory against a virtually unknown Democrat (Woodbridge Mayor Jim McGreevey) in a state enjoying good times. “It’s a lesson that if you run away from your base, the bottom may fall out,” said Randy Tate, executive director of the Christian Coalition. “She obviously lost pro-family Roman Catholics up in New Jersey.”

It may be that conservative disenchantment cost Whitman enthusiasm or volunteers. But it’s hard to say that it cost her many votes. The coalition that elected her in 1997 was a near mirror of her winning coalition in 1993, when she defeated Democrat James J. Florio by 26,000 votes.

Despite Tate’s claim, exit polls found that Whitman actually won by a wider margin among white Catholics against McGreevey (14 percentage points) than she did against Florio (10 percentage points). Nor did Republicans desert Whitman. Four years ago, 81% of them voted for her; this time 80% did.

The best evidence for Tate’s case is that Whitman’s showing among conservatives dropped by about 10% compared with 1993; but proportionately, her vote dropped more among liberals. Whitman survived because she held her support among moderate voters in the center--which is exactly where she positioned herself.

All of this suggests that abortion had little net impact in an election dominated by discontent over auto insurance rates and property taxes: Just 3% of New Jersey voters cited abortion as a key factor in their choice. “If you look at the exit poll, abortion hardly made a dent,” concluded Janice Ballou, polling director at Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute.

Regardless, the conservative conventional wisdom on Whitman may become self-fulfilling; her narrow escape will likely ensure a more rigid party consensus on banning late-term abortions. Yet Gilmore’s example could simultaneously inspire a much more flexible GOP response to abortion overall.

Since 1992, a handful of conservative intellectuals--among them Marvin Olasky, George Weigel, William Kristol and William J. Bennett--have argued that abortion opponents should acknowledge that they lack the public support to pursue an immediate ban. Instead, they say, conservatives should seek to “contain” or “quarantine” abortion though measures such as the “partial-birth” limit or a parental notification requirement for minors. That gradual approach, they argue, can slowly build support for an outright prohibition.

Most antiabortion activists have denounced this argument as a camouflage for abandoning their cause; when Steve Forbes advanced it during last year’s GOP presidential primaries, social conservatives pummeled him. But when Gilmore embraced the containment approach, there was a conspicuous lack of protest from the right.

On election day, Gilmore held support from more than three-fourths of voters who thought abortion should be illegal some or all of the time. Even more important, he won fully half of the voters who said abortion should remain legal most of the time. By neutralizing abortion, Gilmore prevented Democrats from trumping his advantage on taxes.

Gilmore’s strong showing should open eyes in the GOP. So too may the recent conservative warming toward Forbes. GOP consultant Ralph Reed, the former Christian Coalition director, thinks the containment message will become a common theme for GOP hopefuls in 2000; privately, Reed has already counseled Texas Gov. George W. Bush (who struck similar notes in his 1994 race) to move that way if he seeks the presidential nomination. Containment built on support for a ban “at some point uncertain,” Reed says, “is likely to please the base without alienating moderate women voters.”

It remains to be proven that a candidate embracing containment can defeat a more conventionally antiabortion opponent in a Republican presidential primary. But if the GOP can unify behind containment, both the electoral battlefield and the terms of the argument over abortion could look very different the next time Americans pick a president.