GOP Steps Up Attacks on Democrats

Contradicting the belief among some Republicans that the GOP should ease up on President Clinton to avoid lasting political damage, party leaders at a Republican National Committee meeting here Friday stepped up their rhetoric against Clinton.

National Chairman Jim Nicholson, reelected to his post at the gathering, conceded that the political atmosphere in Washington “has grown poisonous” and suffers, as former President Bush observed this week, from “a deficit of decency.” But Nicholson added: “Most of the blame has to be laid at the well-guarded gates of the White House.”

At the same forum, Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), who headed a congressional inquiry into U.S. technology transfers to China, delivered his most searing denunciation to date of Clinton’s policy toward Beijing, deriding what he termed the president’s “warm, wet kiss-up” to Chinese rulers. In an allusion to the scandal that led to Clinton’s impeachment, the normally restrained Cox jeeringly described this approach as tantamount to “a full Lewinsky.”

Nicholson, who easily turned back a challenge from Florida Republican Chairman Tom Slade, used his speech to unveil the latest GOP strategy for dealing with the volatile politics of impeachment. He contended that, ultimately, the issue will benefit the party, despite the recent poll data showing it hurting the Republican image.

“In standing up for American values, Republicans have sustained political damage, at least in the short term,” Nicholson said. But he added: “In failing to stand up for basic American values, Democrats have sustained damage that goes way beyond the political and will cling to them.”

Whether Nicholson’s forecast turns out to be correct, Republicans have no choice but to act on the assumption that it will, according to one strategist familiar with the chairman’s thinking. “If we back off, the Democrats will just call us hypocrites and our own base will scream they’ve been betrayed.” Despite Clinton’s widely lauded delivery of his State of the Union address, Republicans believe that the president is vulnerable to criticism on numerous grounds aside from the personal conduct that led to his impeachment. One such area is what they see as his continued support for expensive government programs, a tendency Nicholson maintained is shared by Clinton’s “chief defender and heir apparent,” Vice President Al Gore.

The administration’s policy on China is another likely target, Republican strategists believe, and this was an opportunity that Cox sought to exploit in his speech.

Cox, who reported last month that the six-month House select committee investigation he led had turned up evidence that technology transfers to China had damaged U.S. security, warned that Clinton’s security policies toward Asia in general and China in particular had “made a more dangerous world.” He specifically cited China’s failure to use its “decisive leverage” to discourage the increasingly aggressive tactics and rhetoric of North Korea.