Dole’s Gun Control Remarks Cause Stir at Forum

Drawing scattered boos, Elizabeth Hanford Dole seized the spotlight Sunday night at the largest gathering yet of the 2000 campaign’s GOP presidential hopefuls with an unexpected embrace of new gun control measures.

In rapid-fire seven-minute speeches at a party dinner here, Dole and seven other contenders echoed common themes of limited government and disdain for President Clinton. But they also illuminated a sharp division over America’s role in the world and a more subtle fissure over the lessons of the Littleton, Colo., high school massacre.

In the evening’s most dramatic moment, Dole, the former American Red Cross president, provoked an angry reaction from some in the crowd when she endorsed a series of gun control measures, including a ban on “cop-killer” bullets and the retention of the 1994 ban on some types of assault weapons.

“I don’t think you need an AK 47 to defend your family,” she said to stony silence as she stood amid the crowd of 1,200 party activists with a clip-on microphone. Moments later, a few catcalls erupted when she called for “safety locks on guns to protect our children.”

The school shooting proved a central topic all evening, and it illuminated a distinction between the contenders over how strongly to stress overtly religious messages in the party’s electoral appeal. While former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander joined Dole in emphasizing public policy changes that might address the tragedy, activist Gary Bauer and former Vice President Dan Quayle offered responses that were unusually explicit in their calls for religious revival.

“The Dow Jones industrial average is near 11,000,” Bauer said, “but if we don’t remember that America was built on God, nothing else will matter.”

On Kosovo, the divisions were even more stark. Just days after the overwhelming majority of House Republicans voted against supporting American involvement in NATO’s air war, Dole strongly endorsed the action. “We must win the war because [Yugoslav President Slobodan] Milosevic is a war criminal,” she insisted.

But she was outnumbered by critics of the war, including Quayle, talk show host Alan Keyes (who called it an “un-American war”) and most emphatically by Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), the state chairman for Texas Gov. George W. Bush, who was one of only three GOP contenders who didn’t attend the event.

Though Bush has endorsed the military action in Kosovo, Gregg said Clinton and NATO “have probably created the single greatest blunder of the post-World War II period by instigating this war.”

Apart from Bush, the other two contenders who missed the forum were Sen. John McCain of Arizona (who was attending his son’s birthday party) and 1996 New Hampshire primary winner Patrick J. Buchanan (who had a previous speaking engagement). Bush has said he will not campaign out of state until the Texas Legislature completes its session at the end of this month.

Notwithstanding his absence, the front-running Bush was a vivid presence at the dinner. At a reception beforehand, his supporters handed out popcorn outside a booth that resembled a movie marquee that read, “George W. Bush: Coming this summer to a neighborhood near you.”

And the governor, the son of former President Bush, was on the mind of several of his rivals. “Our nomination can’t be bought, can’t be inherited,” Alexander said. “It has to be earned.”

Similarly, Quayle told the crowd: “Go with your hearts, not with the polls.”

With Clinton’s impeachment trial and Kosovo dominating the news in 1999, and Bush dominating the polls, the principal challenge for the rest of the GOP field has been simply to establish a clear profile in the race--in effect a brand identity. At Sunday’s gathering in the state that traditionally holds the nation’s first primary, each of the eight on stage continued that effort.

Alexander, who has campaigned in New Hampshire relentlessly since his unsuccessful 1996 bid, drew an enthusiastic response with a speech in which he called for tax cuts and education reforms “to put our government and our culture on the side of parents raising children.”

Quayle continued his bid to identify himself as the voice of the party’s conservative wing, particularly on social issues. Discussing the lessons of Littleton, Quayle called for schools to intensify teaching of “character education” and added: “I would suggest they start with the Ten Commandments.”

Drawing an implicit contrast with Bush, who has never sought national office, Quayle said: “Who has been fighting for your values, and your families for over 20 years . . . and who has been tested?”

Bauer--who has talked about tax cuts, toughening U.S. policy toward China and trade issues at other times in his campaign--on Sunday focused almost entirely on moral, and overtly religious, themes. At one point, Bauer promised to appoint judges who “will hang up the Ten Commandments in every courtroom chamber so the ACLU won’t know who to sue next.”

Dole, the wife of the 1996 GOP presidential nominee, former Sen. Bob Dole, went sharply in the opposite direction, with a message on gun control that invited a cool reception from many here. It continued her efforts to appeal to centrist primary voters, a process visible in her earlier conciliatory comments on abortion and her recent statements endorsing free trade. The hard line on guns also marked the first significant disagreement between Dole and Bush, the one candidate who leads her in the polls.

“I don’t think Gov. Bush would come to a meeting like this and have the bravery to take such a stand,” said one senior Dole advisor.

Publisher Steve Forbes, in a desultory address that failed to spark much enthusiasm, cautioned against seeking a legislative remedy to tragedies like the Colorado massacre. “They say politics is local. Salvation is local. We cannot look to Washington for that.”

Rep. John R. Kasich of Ohio focused on the perennial GOP issue of lower taxes and railed against “a top-down government dominated by elites.”

“We can run America from the family and community to the top,” Kasich said.

Sen. Bob Smith of New Hampshire, delivering a feisty concluding speech on his home turf, took his party leadership to task. Without naming anyone specifically, Smith said: “Republican leaders fail us when they capitulate to Bill Clinton rather than challenge him time after time after time.”