Isolated GOP Will Have to Reach Out for Support for Any Hope in 2000

It’s not the first time that a political party has been tugged in different directions. But the emerging Republican presidential race and the congressional battle over impeachment are sending the country fundamentally contradictory messages: one trying to broaden the GOP’s appeal, the other narrowing it. The party’s fate in 2000 may turn on which of these signals leaves a more lasting impression.

As GOP consultant Ed Gillespie points out, the Republican presidential field is likely to feature an unusually large number of candidates attempting to reach out beyond the party’s usual supporters. Elizabeth Hanford Dole, who edged toward the race last week, offers a path-breaking candidacy that could help combat the party’s problems with women. With his “compassionate conservatism,” Texas Gov. George W. Bush (who will announce his plans this spring) has shown formidable strength among Latinos, African Americans and women.

House Budget Committee Chairman John R. Kasich of Ohio has a youthful exuberance and empathy that may attract both young people and blue-collar Democrats. Arizona Sen. John McCain’s maverick iconoclasm reaches reform-minded independents. Even former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander, though in some ways more conventional, has formulated an intriguing agenda on tax reform and education aimed squarely at the young (often suburban) parents whom President Clinton has peeled away from the GOP.

Three of the other likely contenders--1996 hopeful Steve Forbes, former Vice President Dan Quayle and social conservative activist Gary Bauer--are aiming to assemble more traditional conservative coalitions. And Patrick J. Buchanan, who’s considering another bid, is a category unto himself with his unique blend of anti-corporate, culturally conservative populism.

But the emerging dynamic of the race is likely to force all of the serious contenders to broaden their appeal. That’s a function both of the size of the field and of the composition of the electorate.

The Republican primary electorate is much less monolithically conservative than most people (including many candidates) assume. Depending on the poll, somewhere between one-fourth and one-third of 1996 Republican primary voters described themselves as “very conservative,” the kind of voters who mostly preferred Buchanan. A slightly larger percentage called themselves moderates, with the numbers rising in places like California and Illinois.

The decisive swing bloc--40% and more in some states--are those who consider themselves “somewhat conservative.” That’s a group GOP pollster Whit Ayres describes as “mainstream Republicans”: economic conservatives who aren’t hankering for revolution and probably see such figures as Bob Dole and George Bush the elder as the closest reflections of their views. If anything, says Ayres, in the backlash against impeachment, Republicans are growing even more likely to call themselves moderates or just “somewhat conservative.”

These underlying divisions in the electorate and the lengthening list of potentially attractive candidates point toward one large conclusion. With so many contenders splintering votes in both the center (where the competitors could include McCain, Alexander, Kasich and ultimately Bush and Dole) and the right (where the field will be headlined by Forbes, Quayle, Bauer and possibly Buchanan), no one is likely to win the nomination just by dominating one wing of the party. Instead, the next GOP nominee is likely to be the candidate who can establish the broadest appeal across the party--especially to the mainstream, “somewhat conservative” Republicans.

This could help the GOP because it will encourage its presidential hopefuls to formulate an inclusive message that might widen the party’s audience in the general election as well. Indeed, many Republicans believe their current problems in the polls will recede once the presidential contenders seize the spotlight from the congressional leadership.

The problem with that assumption is that no presidential candidate is an island. As much as they can redefine their parties, presidential nominees are also inexorably colored by the way the public views their parties to begin with. Both Democrat Walter F. Mondale in 1984 and Republican Bob Dole in 1996 thought of themselves as centrists, and both attracted the broad support during the primaries that the next GOP nominee will need. Yet Mondale suffered enormously from association with a permissive liberalism symbolized by the “San Francisco Democrats,” and Dole was crippled by Democratic charges that the country couldn’t risk giving unified control of the White House and Congress to GOP “extremists.”

Though they have convinced themselves otherwise, congressional Republicans may have already ingrained a party image of zealotry at least as damaging as either of those precedents. Since the 1997 budget deal provoked a revolt on the right, the GOP congressional leadership has spent the past 18 months responding almost entirely to its core conservative supporters. That inclination has now reached compulsive levels with the effort to impeach and remove President Clinton--over the opposition of two-thirds of the country.

The result has been an act of extraordinary political self-isolation, with recent polls showing nearly 60% of voters expressing an unfavorable view of the GOP. Senate Republicans seem to recognize the danger in those numbers more than their House counterparts. But whether that awareness can produce a quick end to the confrontation remains to be seen--even after Friday’s agreement narrowing the partisan differences over the rules for a Senate trial.

The fact is that many Republicans in both chambers remain intent on flaying Clinton for as long as possible--no matter what the cost. Even if it just pushed some knotty issues down the road, last week’s Senate agreement on the trial rules constituted the first effort in the GOP since the crisis began to push back against that impulse. The challenge for the cooler heads among Senate Republicans is to maintain control of the process in the days ahead. If they can’t, and the Senate produces as bitter a spectacle as the House, it may leave the GOP in a hole too deep for even the most inclusive presidential nominee to escape.