February 29, 2000
NEWS ANALYSIS
One Party, but Divided: The Split in the
G.O.P.
By ALISON MITCHELL
WASHINGTON, Feb. 28 --
Gov. George W. Bush and
Senator John McCain are seeking the
support of what amounts to two separate
and quite different Republican parties.
Two decades after Ronald Reagan gave
the Christian right an honored place in
the Republican coalition by declaring
before a convention of evangelical
preachers, "You can't endorse me, but I
endorse you," Mr. McCain denounced
Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell today
as "agents of intolerance."
The senator's broadside against figures
long considered an important part of the
Republican constituency was his most
striking break yet with party orthodoxy.
But in a way it was just another step in
his evolving effort to create a new
political force.
Since this race began, Mr. McCain has
been using issues that are anathema to
the conservative wing of his party --
from overhauling the campaign finance
laws to shunning large tax cuts in favor of
shoring up Social Security -- to draw
thousands of new voters to what he
argues could be a "bigger Republican
Party, a party that can claim a governing
majority for a generation or more."
In his vision, it is a force composed of
fewer conservative Republicans, and
more of Ross Perot's independents and
the suburban swing voters who twice
helped elect Bill Clinton. And his aides
admit that along the way they may have
to leave some of their party behind.
"The campaign didn't start with the idea
that we are creating a new party," John
Weaver, Mr. McCain's political director,
said recently. But now that it has taken
that course, Mr. Weaver said, "if we
succeed, not all of the party will be with
us."
Mr. Bush, on the other hand, is trying to
preserve and straddle the coalition that Mr. Reagan built, stretching from
evangelical Christians to the Catholics who became known as Reagan
Democrats.
"I think Governor Bush is following the classic Reagan model," said
Ralph Reed, the former executive director of the Christian Coalition, who
now advises Mr. Bush.
"Begin with core conservative voters. Move from there to rank-and-file
Republicans. Then move to independents. Then move out to conservative
Democrats. It's a dynamic process."
But what Mr. Reed sees as logical and smooth progression has become
anything but.
With each passing day, as Mr. Bush and Mr. McCain have traded
primary victories, the race has become ever more bitter as each side vies
for potential pieces of the coalition: independents in New Hampshire,
religious conservatives in South Carolina and Reagan Democrats in
Michigan.
Now, some Republicans and Democrats alike are wondering whether the
pitched primary battle will not create a new force but simply leave the
Republicans in tatters.
"This fight may have been inevitable," said Senator Robert G. Torricelli,
the New Jersey Democrat who heads his party's Senate election effort,
"but it's also going to be extremely difficult ever to put the Republican
Party back together."
Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, a Bush supporter, said the disputes
between Mr. McCain and Mr. Bush had reached "crisis proportions" and
called for the party to "get back on the issues."
The intense face-off has come as a shock to the party establishment,
which had once expected Republicans to quickly coalesce around Mr.
Bush, a sunny conservative with crossover appeal to moderates and new
immigrants whose image could replace the outdated Bob Dole or the
polarizing former House speaker, Newt Gingrich.
In short, the Republican who could give the party the unifying figure it has
lacked since the Reagan days.
Yet even through both Mr. Bush and Mr. McCain are Southwestern
conservatives who originally wanted to play down social issues and make
the party more inclusive, they have become magnets drawing different
elements of their fractured party.
Mr. McCain, with his appeal to Democrats and independents, is trying to
assemble a coalition that taps into the movement started by Ross Perot
and his Reform Party.
"There is an overwhelming desire among the American electorate for an
end to politics as usual," said Marshall Wittmann, an adviser to Mr.
McCain.
"We first saw that in '92 with the Perot phenomenon," he said. "We then
saw it in '98 in Minnesota. People are looking for an end to the
ideological polarization to American politics."
Bill McInturff, Mr. McCain's pollster, said that in a national poll he had
conducted, 24 percent of primary voters nationally who said they would
support Mr. McCain voted for Mr. Perot in 1996.
In contrast, Mr. McInturff said, only 2 percent of Bush supporters voted
for Mr. Perot.
Mr. Bush, who began his campaign hoping to bring new immigrants and
other new voters into the Republican fold, has been pushed by Mr.
McCain into running a primary campaign focused on the traditional
conservative Republican base. Mr. Bush has sought to energize the
party's core constituency by accusing Mr. McCain of "hijacking" the
Republican primaries by drawing Democrats and independents into them.
Mr. Bush's supporters say that he is involved in a step-by-step building
process and that with the Republican base consolidated behind him, he
will eventually reassemble the winning Reagan coalition of Christian
conservatives, big business and the broad middle class, including some
Democrats and independents.
"We're very confident," said Ari Fleischer, a spokesman for Mr. Bush,
"that independent voters who are terribly important and for now are
drawn to Senator McCain's candidacy will in the end come home to
George Bush when the choice is between Bush and Gore."
Mr. McCain's supporters contend that Republicans lost elections in 1996
and 1998 and will again unless they reshape their coalition and their
message to account for the nation's new prosperity and the rise of the
suburbs, whose swing voters turned to Mr. Clinton in droves in 1996.
"The conventional Republican view of the last few years is we had bad
luck," said William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, who is
supporting Mr. McCain. "We were outmaneuvered by Clinton. Gingrich
messed up and Dole messed up. But basically the party is in good shape.
The conservative movement is in good shape and all we need is a better
messenger."
But the question facing Mr. McCain is whether a strategy that might
work in a general election can prevail in Republican primaries. After
Tuesday's primaries in Virginia and Washington the race moves away
from open primaries that allow non-Republicans to vote to ones limited
to or weighted to Republicans.
"If you're losing badly among Republicans," said Senator Paul D.
Coverdell, the Georgia Republican who is Mr. Bush's chief liaison to
Senate Republicans, "sooner or later in these Republican closed
primaries, Western and Southern primaries, they're going to be more like
South Carolina."
One risk for Mr. McCain is that some Republican constituency groups
are likely to feel that his way of shaking things up, as well as the coalition
he is building, is simply not Republican enough.
Grover Norquist, the head of Americans for Tax Reform, which has run
advertisements against Mr. McCain, says he finds it hard to tell what side
Mr. McCain stands on in the political wars despite his largely
conservative voting record.
"The Bush argument is, 'I'm on the good team,' " Mr. Norquist said.
"McCain's argument is, 'It's all corrupt. I'll go to Washington and fix it.'
So now you're not on either team."
Mr. Norquist added, "The argument that both are equally corrupt doesn't
impress Republicans."
Mr. Coverdell said that many of Mr. McCain's colleagues cannot live
with his position on issues like a tobacco tax or an overhaul of campaign
financing. He pointed to a line in Mr. McCain's speech after winning in
Michigan and Arizona in which he urged Republicans not to fear him but
to join him.
"What would ever prompt a candidate for president to stand up to his
own party and say you don't have to be afraid of me?" Mr. Coverdell
asked.
If such sentiments do not abate, should Mr. McCain become the party
nominee, he could lose a significant part of his coalition -- particularly if
Patrick J. Buchanan is running on the Reform Party line.
"The challenge for Senator McCain, should he become the nominee,
would be keeping the conservative base of the party inside the big tent,"
said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster unaligned with either campaign.
And for Mr. Bush the challenge could be how to recapture his image as a
broader-based candidate after Mr. McCain has so repeatedly tarred him
as the candidate of the far right. Mr. Bush's letter to Cardinal John
O'Connor of New York, expressing "deep regret" over his missed
opportunity to criticize anti-Catholic views when he visited Bob Jones
University on Feb. 2, seemed a step in that direction. |
