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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brian P. who wrote (12610)	2/25/2000 4:43:00 PM
From: Brian P.	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

More truth from William Safire. Ignore it at your own peril, guys: February 24, 2000 ESSAY / By WILLIAM SAFIRE The 'McCain Majority' The primary message of Michigan -- one of the must-win "battleground states" in November's election -- is that John McCain would win the state for the G.O.P. and George W. Bush would probably lose it. That doesn't bother leaders of the religio-political right. Echoing the cry of the commander of the British Middlesex Regiment at an 1811 battle -- "Die hard, men, die hard!" -- they would rather die hard than win. That's why we hear the lame excuse from them that McCain's victory was somehow tainted by the outpouring of independents and Democrats. When Bush put his political future in the televangelist Pat Robertson's hands in South Carolina, he purchased a single-state "firewall" at the price of the independent vote that determines the election of presidents. As a result, Robertson was allowed by Bush to blanket Michigan with recorded phone calls trashing McCain as a threat to Christians. This helped trigger the outpouring of independents that won McCain the biggest delegation so far. With coming primaries in New York and California limited to registered Republicans, the question before Bush now is: Should he stick with the slash-and-damn politics of Robertson and other intolerant far-right leaders, who say they can deliver a third of the party's voters? Or should Bush pull his McCain's-a-hypocrite ads and compete for the Republican center, which might give the formerly moderately conservative Texan a chance at winning the nomination in a way that does not guarantee defeat in November? A couple of personal memories suggest the answer. In 1964, I was dragging a "Stay in the Mainstream" banner for the Rockefeller-Scranton campaign across the floor of the G.O.P. convention in San Francisco's Cow Palace as Barry Goldwater delivered his inflammatory line defending extremism. As hot-eyed zealots rocked the hall, I looked over at Richard Nixon's box. He was sitting on his hands. Nixon knew that at that moment, Goldwater -- captive of the hard right -- had, in thumbing his nose at moderates and independents, not only lost the election for himself but for hundreds of other G.O.P. candidates in one of the worst debacles in the party's history. Fast-forward to the convention of 1992. President Bush's managers appeased the far right by giving Pat Buchanan prime time on national TV. His declaration of "religious war" and "cultural war for the soul of America" delighted the hard-core anti-abortion lobby but soured the nation on the G.O.P. -- defeating Bush and bringing us Bill Clinton. Now the same set of religi-pols is demanding the same domination of the party on cultural issues as their price for delivering their legions to George W. Bush. He apparently promised Robertson not to change a word of the harsh language of the anti-abortion platform plank of which the majority of regular Republicans -- and the vast majority of independents -- strongly disapprove. Down that road is defeat. Bush need not spurn the support of the far right, which includes many principled people not driven by hatred; indeed, the reverent Robertson has graciously permitted Bush to say he would not impose a Roe v. Wade litmus test on judges. But he needs to call off his dogs of derogation. I live in the TV market that includes northern Virginia, and for the past two weeks have been bombarded with Bush spots tearing down John McCain, making him out to be a phony reformer. (Not a McCain ad in reply.) Bush threw away $2 million in Arizona on these same ads in vainly trying to pry Republicans there from their senator. Unrestrained by Bush, Pat Robertson is preparing his poison phone bank for Virginia. Bush now trails in delegates, 92 to 85; if he wants to win the nomination in a way that may yet allow him to win the election, he should compete for the support of the reasonable Republicans. We reacted badly to his sellout at Bob Jones U., we don't go for his continued TV smearing of McCain, and we will resist another party takeover by the die-hard losers of the self-righteous right. Bush has plenty to debate McCain about, from tax cuts to campaign finance reform to Wilsonian morality in foreign policy. Unless Bush is up to that, he will find himself enlisting in the McCain majority.