Conservative Senator’s Farewell Tirade Rattles GOP

New Hampshire Sen. Bob Smith bolted from the Republican Party with a harshly worded speech Tuesday, a defection some GOP leaders fear could signal a trend among frustrated conservative activists.

Smith was the longest of longshots in the GOP presidential race, but his words from the Senate floor gave voice to complaints in the party’s right flank that the Republican establishment is compromising its core principles by coalescing so quickly behind Texas Gov. George W. Bush’s presidential candidacy.

“This is not a party,” Smith told his colleagues in an emotional address that lasted for an hour. “Maybe it is a party in the sense of wearing hats and blowing whistles. But it’s not a party that means anything.”

What worries party leaders are signs that conservative commentator Patrick J. Buchanan is tempted to jump ship as well, possibly to the Reform Party that Ross Perot founded in 1992.

Frustration is high among other conservatives as well, with presidential contenders Gary Bauer and Steve Forbes charging that many GOP officials have put pragmatism ahead of principle in rushing to embrace Bush long before any voters have weighed in.

“The significant question for presidential politics is whether Bob Smith is an aberration or a harbinger,” said Washington-based political analyst Norman Ornstein.

Meanwhile, Bush’s broad support continued to grow Tuesday, with GOP sources confirming that Ohio Rep. John R. Kasich intends to pull out of the presidential contest today and endorse the front-runner.

In his speech Tuesday, Smith declared himself an independent. He is expected to seek the presidential nomination of the U.S. Taxpayers Party.

The defection of a senator is “quite rare,” said Senate historian Richard Baker, who compiled a list of about a dozen cases in the 20th century.

The last time a Republican senator renounced his own party was in 1952, when Sen. Wayne Morse of Oregon became an independent. Morse went on to win reelection to additional terms as a Democrat. In recent years, Democratic Sens. Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado and Richard C. Shelby of Alabama switched to the GOP.

It remained uncertain Tuesday whether Smith, a senator since 1990, would hold onto his committee chairmanship--he heads the panel that investigates ethics complaints against colleagues--and continue to participate in GOP strategy meetings.

“We need to sit down and think it through,” said Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), who tried to talk Smith out of his decision. “We’re not going to overreact.”

Initial signs were that Smith’s GOP colleagues will not ostracize him. After his speech, many of them lined up to shake his hand. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who controls GOP Senate campaign funds, praised Smith as a solid Republican despite his switch. “I think he’s going to continue to act like one and should be treated like one,” he said.

Others were not so charitable.

Jim Nicholson, chairman of the Republican National Committee, penned an angry letter to Smith last week when word surfaced of the planned defection. He warned Smith the move will prove a “serious mistake for you personally, with only a marginal political impact--and a counterproductive one at that.”

Nicholson contended that Smith--barely a blip in the polls--had wrongly assumed that his failure as a candidate meant the GOP had abandoned its principles. Nicholson insisted that all the party’s presidential candidates, including Bush, remain committed to a conservative agenda.

But Smith, who boasts that virtually nobody has a voting record as solidly conservative as his, rejected that claim. Indeed, it has been clear for weeks that he was particularly bothered by the efforts of Bush to play down the party’s historic opposition to abortion rights.

Although Bush generally opposes abortion rights, he has argued that it makes little sense to spotlight that position when polls show a majority of Americans disagree with it. Smith, an adamant foe of abortion rights, implicitly lashed out at that stance in his speech Tuesday.

“I want my party to stand for something,” he said. “I’ve come to the cold realization that the Republican Party is more interested in winning elections than supporting principles. . . . The Republican platform is a meaningless document.”

The potential that others in the party’s right wing will raise similar objections and threaten to defect could prove especially troublesome to Bush by forcing him to more aggressively court conservatives, as past Republican nominees have done. That, in turn, could hurt Bush’s ability to attract support in the general election.

“It may increase the chances that there will be a pro-life vice presidential nominee,” said Marshall Wittmann, an analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “Bob Smith will give pro-lifers a concrete option if they are forgotten.”

The U.S. Taxpayers Party calls for an end to abortion and welfare, a withdrawal from international trade agreements and a repeal of the federal income tax. The phone number at party headquarters drives home that latter point: (800) 2-VETO-IRS.

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Video of Sen. Bob Smith’s speech announcing his decision to leave the Republican Party is available on The Times’ Web site: https://www.latimes.com/smith