Party Time: Should conservatives start their own party?

THE U.S. News & World Report headline said it all: "Can Bush Save the GOP?" Here is a political party so demoralized as to accept the media spins that it lost the election it actually won, that its "defeat" is the result of embracing hard-right social policies and non-mainstream conservative candidates it sedulously avoided, and that it can be saved only by a governor who gained a majority of Latino voters by his "inclusive" politics when he didn't.

These illusions can be exploded easily enough. In the national vote for the House of Representatives, Republicans won half a million more votes than Democrats. In close Senate elections, moderate Republicans like Matt Fong lost winnable races (and in Fong's case, the Asian vote) quite as often as did conservatives like Ellen Sauerbrey and Dan Lungren, both of whom, as it happens, ran away from conservatism in the course of their campaigns. And although Bush won a landslide 69 per cent of all voters, he gained only 49 per cent of Hispanics, despite using a Spanish language commercial with the tag line: "Vote for Bush- Who cares if he's not a Democrat?" This sort of reverse inclusiveness may confirm the insight that the Republicans have a choice: they can either change their policy on immigration or change all their other policies. It is hardly the prescription for a national victory.

Since Reagan left office, however, the GOP establishment has shown an ineradicable will to believe that moderates win elections and conservatives lose them. Whatever arguments or evidence are brought to bear-the victories of Reagan and Bush '88, the defeats of Ford, Dole, and Bush '92-Republicans will not be shaken. In recent days, President Ford and Senator Dole, both of whom might have been restrained by embarrassment alone, have argued the cause of moderation. And while "me-tooism" might have seemed a pragmatic strategy when liberal Democrats were regularly winning elections, the fashion for it in the face of conservative successes argues a collective neurosis.

But if this ideological timidity is a post-Reagan condition, how is 1994 to be explained? How did a morally enfeebled GOP conceive and carry through the bold reforms of the Contract with America? The answer is simple: Ross Perot conceived them. Review the major items for a moment: a balanced budget, welfare reform, a hint of term limits, and parliamentary rules forcing Congress to obey the various regulations it had passed for the rest of us. With the exception of welfare reform, these were originally advanced by Perot in his apparently quixotic 1992 campaign. Newt Gingrich shrewdly picked them up and passed them into law, and Bill Clinton entrenched them permanently by supporting them in the 1996 election. But little in the Contract was a priority for Wall Street Journal conservatives or for traditionalists, and the conservative issues Perot did not embrace-such as opposition to racial quotas-got nowhere.

Perot the entrepreneur had revealed unsatisfied demand in the political market. Alerted by his 19 per cent in the election, others picked up his ideas and drove the pioneer onto the sidelines. In business perhaps, that would have been a tragedy; in politics it was a triumph since it moved America in his political direction.

Nor is this of purely historical interest. Signs of unsatisfied demand in today's political marketplace abound: latent but powerful issues, insurgent movements, neglected demographic constituencies. Initiatives in California and elsewhere have shown overwhelming support for issues such as opposition to bilingual education that the nervous GOP establishment had shunned as too extreme. Insurgent political movements such as Perot's Reform Party and Pat Buchanan's America First have gained surprisingly high levels of support in prosperous times. For instance, Jesse Ventura's wild victory occurred in the state with the highest turnout (61 per cent). Where did these votes come from?

At least three demographic categories are political orphans. Kevin Phillips has pointed to the steady loss of Republican votes in the northern tier of the U.S. as deracinated WASPs-the very people who founded the GOP-drift from the party they now regard as too overtly religious, too Southern, and inexplicably hostile to their favored causes of environmentalism and population control. Minority conservatives are similarly homeless since those Republicans like Jack Kemp who try to recruit them do so by addressing them mistakenly as a liberal constituency that supports racial quotas, welfare, etc. Finally, the white working class (a/k/a Reagan Democrats) is disaffected economically from the Republicans but socially from the Democrats. Having been won briefly over to the GOP in 1994, this callused constituency is unlikely to be won back again by appeals crafted to seduce upper-class feminists.

Yet that is probably what they will be offered. The GOP is moving left ("to the Center"), and if objections are raised, the response will be that the conservatives have nowhere else to go. That is false of course, since they can always go home. But that criticism will simply be drowned out by the mantra, now being chanted ever louder.

The solution is to give conservatives somewhere else to go: namely an independent national conservative party. The first advantage of such a party is that a constituency now taken for granted would have to be wooed. Such a party could also, like Perot, pioneer those issues which the GOP either pays lip service to (racial preferences, tax cuts) or ignores entirely (English only, immigration). It would force the Republicans to move rightwards while simultaneously allowing them to seem "moderate" by comparison. And it would not be burdened with the GOP's unfortunate image as a "white male" party; indeed, it could be led by non-white conservatives, such as Ward Connerly, whose bravery has made them admired among heartland conservatives. That would help it to take more principled stands on issues involving race than the guilt- ridden Republicans can manage.

The obvious objection to this proposal is that an independent conservative party would split the Right and ensure the victory of the Left. But this objection has force only if the new party seeks to replace the GOP as the main party on the Right and competes for all national and state offices. William Rusher, an early advocate of such a party in his book The Making of the New Majority, abandoned his advocacy for that very reason-and because Ronald Reagan came along and made a new conservative party unnecessary.

Suppose, however, that such a party is not a contender for power, except potentially, but a philosophical ginger group independent of, but generally allied with, the GOP. It would support those Republican candidates (or occasionally Democratic candidates) who were acceptably conservative, but run its own man when the GOP nominated a liberal. The threat itself would be enough in most years. New York has had an independent conservative party on these lines for the last forty years. It has elected one Senator of its own (James Buckley), come close to electing a Governor of its own (Herb London), and had the useful general effect of keeping the Republicans somewhat honest.

New York has such a party because its election law allows cross- endorsements. The Conservative Party can therefore put up its own candidate, or advise its supporters to abstain, or endorse the Republican on its own party line-perhaps winning for him the support of conservative Democrats who could not bring themselves to pull the Republican lever. The usefulness of such cross-endorsements was recently demonstrated in dramatically negative fashion when Republican candidate Dennis Vacco (acting on the advice of his GOP consultant ("to the Center"), refused to put his name on the "Right-to-Life" line and has apparently been defeated by 20,000 votes, when all the Right-to- Life candidates got about 72,000 votes.

Of course, only ten states allow cross-endorsements. Without them, an independent party would be less able to help a genuinely conservative Republican by putting his name on the conservative line. But it would still be able to harm a liberal Republican by putting up an independent conservative against him. As a result of which, the state or local GOP would be less likely to select a liberal in the first place.

The moral seems to be that conservatives should take the high road and seek to change state electoral laws to allow cross-endorsement. Until then, however, punishing faithless Republicans remains possible, necessary, perhaps sufficient-and certainly enjoyable.