Some in GOP Suggest Softer Stand on Abortion--for Sake of Victory

When Texas Gov. George W. Bush recently signaled his plans to run for president, some conservatives immediately attacked him for soft-pedaling his opposition to abortion.

More striking, however, was the response from leading anti-abortion activists--from the Rev. Pat Robertson to the head of the National Right to Life Committee--who rushed to the Republican front-runner’s defense. Their message was clear: Winning is what counts. Sweat the details later.

Struggling to find a successful formula after two straight losing White House campaigns and a surprise setback in last year’s midterm elections, many Republicans are calculating that purity--at least as perceived by some in the party--is less important than electability. And the abortion issue presents a definitive test case, as Bush and other leading presidential hopefuls pursue a more accommodating, less ideological approach to a subject that long has vexed the GOP.

“In the past, our opponents have liked to use [abortion] as a symbol of [Republican] intolerance,” said Leslie Goodman, a former national Republican Party spokeswoman and aide to former President Bush. “As a party, we have to agree to disagree on this issue if we’re going to make winning a priority.”

Some in GOP Move Closer to Center

The bid to downplay the abortion issue is just one step some Republicans are taking to recast the party’s image. By discussing ways to fix--rather than ignore--public schools and urging ways to streamline--but not necessarily eliminate--government programs, many of the top GOP contenders are edging conspicuously closer to the middle ground Democrats seized in 1992, when Bill Clinton first won the White House. It’s no accident.

With his support for the death penalty and welfare reform, Clinton not only broke a seeming Republican lock on the White House, he single-handedly remade a struggling Democratic Party in his own centrist image. His winning “new Democrat” formula has been emulated by scores of politicians since, among them California Gov. Gray Davis.

“Republicans marginalized Democrats on symbolic issues like the death penalty for years,” said Don Sipple, a veteran GOP strategist. “Then the Democrats got so desperate to win, they allowed for accommodation. They won and went on the offensive. Now we’re in the process of trying to reclaim the middle ground.”

As some Republicans pursue that effort, no issue is likely to loom as large as abortion, the subject of perennial sniping in virtually every party nominating contest of the last two decades. Already, several of the more conservative likely presidential candidates have threatened to vigorously oppose even a marginal shift away from the party’s staunchly anti-abortion position.

Patrick J. Buchanan warned of a “civil war” if the party softens its anti-abortion stance. Gary Bauer, a favorite of the Christian Right, has called any compromise “a cop-out . . . not worthy of a great party.”

Debate Amounts to Matter of Degree

For all its symbolic weight, however, the debate within the Republican Party amounts to a difference of degree. Each of the 11 GOP presidential hopefuls is avowedly opposed to abortion--a fact highlighted in TV advertisements launched this week by a leading abortion-rights group in the key early campaign states of Iowa and New Hampshire.

“You can try to bollix things up or soften a core position by talking about ancillary issues, like . . . parental consent” for teenage abortions, said Garry South, a Davis strategist who helped conceive the ad campaign. “But, fundamentally, this is a yes-or-no question.”

Among the GOP hopefuls, candidates differ somewhat over whether they would allow abortion in cases of rape, incest or to protect the life of the mother. But they differ markedly on the emphasis they give the abortion issue.

While candidates on the right--most notably Bauer, Buchanan and Steve Forbes--routinely stress their opposition to abortion rights, Elizabeth Hanford Dole has yet to address the issue since surfacing as a likely candidate. Bush has been nearly as vague. Former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander never touched abortion in his formal announcement speech.

Rep. John R. Kasich of Ohio offered a glimpse of the high-wire that many of the GOP candidates are attempting to walk on the subject. While stressing that he would nominate Supreme Court justices who oppose abortion, Kasich also told reporters this week: “I can respect people who have a different view on this than me. My wife has a different view than I have on this issue.”

The most fundamental disagreement among the GOP candidates is over how aggressively they would pursue a constitutional amendment to overturn Roe vs. Wade, the landmark high court decision legalizing abortion, which has long been the ultimate goal of the anti-abortion movement.

Bush, Forbes and Alexander all have cast doubt on the viability of such an effort. They speak instead of incremental steps, including a ban on certain late-term abortions and other measures to reduce the number of procedures until such time as public opinion shifts in favor of an outright prohibition.

“America is not ready to ban abortions,” Bush said recently, “because America’s hearts are not right.”

His comments drew immediate criticism from Bauer and Focus on the Family President James Dobson, among other social conservatives.

But days later, Bush got a surprising second from Robertson, founder of the staunchly anti-abortion Christian Coalition, and, separately, from David O’Steen, head of the National Right to Life Committee, who urged anti-abortion allies to lay off the GOP front-runner and focus their attacks on the Democratic front-runner, Vice President Al Gore, instead.

“I think Bush is reflecting the reality we find ourselves in,” O’Steen said in a follow-up interview. “I didn’t see any problem with him talking about incremental steps.”

To some in the GOP, that represents a welcome pragmatism.

Without retreating from the party’s fundamental anti-abortion stance, “it’s a matter of how far up the list of priorities it is,” said Whit Ayres, a leading Republican pollster and proponent of a softer-edged GOP.

Others, however, are quick to cry sellout. “It’s quite honestly a real setback,” said Patrick Mooney, chairman and founder of American Right to Life, an anti-abortion group, who faulted Robertson for giving Bush “political cover.”

“Some people will say it’s capitulation and others will say it’s realism,” GOP strategist Bill Kristol said of the dueling priorities--purity vs. electability--pitted in the abortion fight. “The Republican Party will have to wrestle with that and . . . choose a course over the next 18 months.”