Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/111692/11169913.000

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                                                                                COVER STORIES, Page 65

ELECTION `92

Divided They Fall


Deeply splintered over ideology, policy and personalities, the
Republicans face a bitter struggle over their party's future
course

By MICHAEL DUFFY/WASHINGTON


    For Republicans, the battle for 1996 began officially
last Tuesday, but it had started unofficially more than two
years ago, when George Bush reneged on his no-new-taxes pledge.
He sparked a full-scale revolt by the party's right wing, which
neither much liked nor trusted him in the first place. Led by
Patrick Buchanan, angry conservatives mounted a challenge to
Bush in the early primaries. The President, in turn, wooed the
right so relentlessly at the Republican Convention in August
that he alienated the moderates. Bush never recovered from the
error.

    Bush's defeat only deepens the fissures in the party.
Lacking the anti communism and prosperity glue that united them
for the past 25 years, conservatives and moderates are certain
to fight more fiercely over such already contentious issues as
taxes, spending, deficits, abortion rights -- and ultimately
over the Grand Old Party's soul. "It's going to be a typical
Republican war," says Wayne Berman, a senior adviser to the Bush
campaign. "It will be no-holds-barred, hand-to-hand combat for
at least a year."

    The finger pointing began even before the first vote was
cast. On Friday, Oct. 30, a group of conservative activists met
in Washington to autopsy the President's defeat. The wording of
their invitation was vitriolic: "The Republican Party, poised
for a massive victory just one year ago, is in tatters . . . The
Bush forces . . . are already practicing damage control, blaming
the conservative movement for the disaster they have caused."
Nor is the bickering confined to the right against the center.
The broad middle of the party is divided on economics, privacy
and industrial policy. A look at the factions:


    The Religious Right. Championed by such figures as
Buchanan and televangelist Pat Robertson, this group would
return the party to a Reagan-era platform emphasizing tax cuts
and aggressive deregulation of business to cure the economy and
strict family values to salve the nation's social ills. The far
right would go further, getting the government out of the
workplace but into private homes, backing stricter laws against
abortion, restricting the rights of homosexuals and widening
censorship. Though these so-called cultural conservatives
represent only a small fraction of the electorate, they are a
powerful force in Republican politics and provide much of the
seed money and ground troops essential to winning elections.


    Progressive Conservatives. This faction admires the hard
right's faith in values but has little use for its protectionist
leanings on economics and trade. The progressives also feel that
where the free market fails, government should offer
disadvantaged Americans a hand with jobs, education and health
care -- as long as that aid takes the form of antibureaucratic
incentives like tax breaks and vouchers. Their leading apostle
is Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Jack Kemp, who has
spent the past four years trying to reach out to African
Americans and other minorities with sermons about enterprise
zones, ownership and management of tenant housing, and school
choice. This group also includes former Delaware Governor Pete
Du Pont, former Secretary of Education William Bennett and a
host of like-minded Republicans in the House of Representatives.
Most G.O.P. veterans acknowledge that whoever takes control of
the party in 1996 will have to adopt at least some of the
progressives' ideas. "The country stands ready to reward
whichever party can deliver real results at the lowest possible
cost," says James Pinkerton, a Bush campaign aide who is one of
the group's leading thinkers. "And in this day and age, that
puts a premium on nonbureaucratic solutions."


    Center-Right Republicans. They believe the party can
recapture a majority by emphasizing its two traditional
strengths: fiscal restraint and foreign-policy stewardship. The
centrists, who include Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Texas
Senator Phil Gramm, consider the far right too offensive to
independent-minded voters, especially women, and believe the
Kempites are too cavalier about the federal budget deficit. An
ex-Democrat, Gramm said he could balance the budget within five
years, and has gone further than anyone except Ross Perot in
calling for reduction in such entitlements as Medicaid and
Medicare. Unlike Kemp and other supply-siders, Gramm and his
colleagues do not believe tax cuts alone will automatically
expand the economy or shrink the deficit and public debt. Gramm
is not well liked, but he is respected and has made no secret
of his White House ambitions. Though he lacks a political base,
Cheney is a more affable conservative who is increasingly
mentioned as a compromise candidate by those who despair of
uncharismatic Gramm and his stiff medicine.


    Pragmatic Republicans. What's left of the moderate wing of
the Republican Party inhabits the state capitals. Socially
moderate but economically conservative, this group is generally
tough on crime, tolerant of abortion rights and concerned about
deficits. It is typified by such G.O.P. Governors as Pete Wilson
of California and William Weld of Massachusetts who have had to
wrestle with sluggish economies as well as the mood swings of
an electorate whose jobs are shifting rapidly from the high-wage
manufacturing sector to lower-wage service and information
industries. This group is less reluctant than other G.O.P.
factions to use government to ease that transition. "There are
people in the party who have apoplexy when they hear the words
industrial policy," says Weld, who backs government aid to
business to stimulate bank lending and small-business
investment. "I have fibrillations, but I don't have apoplexy."

    Whoever is chosen to replace Rich Bond as party chairman
next January will face the task of reuniting the fractious
G.O.P. Departing Minnesota Congressman Vin Weber seems the
favorite for the job, partly because he is a straight-talking
pol who kept his head above water while the President was
drowning in his futile re-election bid. Du Pont also wants the
party job, and has hinted he would forgo another run at the
White House if he got it. Gramm and many moderate Bush
operatives believe Labor Secretary Lynn Martin would do a better
job of preventing the party from swerving too far to the right.

    The tug-of-war over the chairman's gavel is merely a
prelude to the fight over the 1996 nomination. Most party
watchers expect Kemp and his fellow progressives to advance
their newfangled agenda while wooing the hard right with
promises of fealty on family values. With Buchanan, Kemp and
possibly Bennett or Robertson crowding the right side of the
field, Vice President Dan Quayle can afford to shift more toward
the center. Quayle, who keeps a Bush-like foot in nearly all
camps, has already begun to moderate his position on abortion,
suggesting that Republicans should concentrate on restricting
the procedure if they cannot eliminate it altogether.

    The apparent front runner for 1996 is Kemp, who ran poorly
in the 1988 primaries but won a straw poll of National
Committee members at the G.O.P. Convention in Houston this year.
Nonetheless, Quayle remains a contender for the nomination
because he has spent the past four years crisscrossing the
country, collecting political IOUs and raising money. If eight
or nine Republicans enter the race in 1996, early primaries
might go to the candidate who can attract as little as 18% of
the vote.

    Despite their differences, nearly all the presidential
aspirants are united on what it means to be a Republican. Du
Pont notes that the party's factions and their presidential
hopefuls are united by a common belief: "The single common
denominator from Bill Weld to Pat Robertson is smaller
government and economic growth." But selling that to the public
may not be easy now that George Bush has presided over the
largest deficits, highest taxes and biggest government in U.S.
history.

    Burton Pines, a conservative activist, believes the
Republican Party may be sunk if Clinton steers a moderate course
and backs free-market solutions to education, welfare reform,
health care and job training. "Clinton has the chance," says
Pines, "of becoming the Democrats' Eisenhower, the man who ran
against the New Deal but then confirmed it. If Clinton moves to
the right, he has a chance to create a majority party."

    Maybe so. But with the Democrats in Congress divided into
nearly as many factions as the Republicans, Clinton may have a
difficult time moving boldly in any direction. If, by 1996,
predicts political consultant Stuart Rothenberg, Clinton is
plagued by a still sluggish economy, a party in rebellion and
a disgruntled electorate, "the Republicans get to do what the
Democrats did in 1992, which is run as outsiders who want to
bring about change." That's what got Ronald Reagan elected in
1980, after a Southern Governor who promised new directions
failed to deliver during his presidency.