REPUBLICANS MEET TO PLOT COURSE FOR FUTURE.

Byline: Steven Thomma Knight-Ridder Newspapers

In the mid-1980s, after losing two presidential elections, Democrats went through a period of ideological soul-searching, with liberals such as Jesse Jackson pushing the party to the left and centrists such as then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton pushing it rightward.

Clinton and his allies won that battle, and then two presidential elections, and ended up pulling much of the party in Congress toward the center with him.

Now it's the Republicans' turn.

While they control both houses of Congress and 32 of the governors' offices in the nation, they are casting about for a way back to the White House. And whichever ideology prevails in that battle could likely pull the rest of the party with it.

Gathering here earlier this week in their first national meeting since the Nov. 5 election, Republicans started planning their future course. The central figures here were the members of the Republican Governors Association, but GOP activists and leaders from Congress and state parties filled the hallways as well.

Many Republicans are looking to the nation's 32 GOP governors, both for policy ideas such as welfare reform, and for political success.

Noting that the Republican governors - who outnumber Democrats nearly 2-1 - are the most popular Republicans in the country, national party Chairman Haley Barbour on Tuesday urged them to continue proposing new ideas about governing in order to lead the party to future election victories.

``You're doing what we are trying to do nationally,'' he said.

The governors, many of whom won commanding re-elections in recent years, are among those with ready answers for why the party lost the presidential election, pointing to Clinton's adoption of popular Republican proposals or Bob Dole's poorly executed campaign, or both.

``Bill Clinton only won because he convinced a lot of people that he thought like a Republican. Republican ideas won,'' said Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, mentioning ideas like tax cuts and welfare reform.

``The Republican agenda has already captured the hearts and minds of imagination of the future,'' said New Hampshire Gov. Stephen Merrill, now running to replace Barbour as party chairman.

But if a Democrat can co-opt traditionally Republican issues, what does that leave for Republicans? That is where the party splinters into factions, with some urging the party to stress conservative social positions, some urging it to adopt more-moderate social positions, and some urging it to stay just the way it is. Some want the party to be more combative, some want it to be more compromising.

If Republican governors lead the way to a new Republican Party, they would probably face a battle from the more conservative activists who have traditionally had great influence in presidential primaries.

Many of the country's most successful and popular governors are fiscal conservatives but social moderates.

Govs. Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey, George Pataki of New York, William Weld of Massachusetts, Jim Edgar of Illinois, and Pete Wilson of California are abortion-rights supporters who watched Clinton win their states.

``We need to underscore that we are the party of Lincoln, the party of inclusion,'' said Whitman, whose chance at winning the GOP presidential nomination lies in the hope the party could nominate an abortion-rights supporter for the first time since Gerald Ford in 1976.

Moreover, Whitman said, the party needs to temper its conservative rhetoric. For instance, she said, when Republicans talk about eliminating the federal Department of Education, they need to stress with equal passion their desire to transfer money and power to states to help improve education.

Conservative activists urge a different approach.

``They lost because something is wrong in the very heart of the GOP,'' said Gary Bauer, chairman of the conservative Family Research Council who is urging the party to be more zealous in its opposition to abortion next time.

``If conservatives do not unite and get it right by the year 2000, then they'll awaken to a similar heartache four years from now with headlines that read, `Gore Campaign in Landslide over X.' You fill in the blank.''

Beyond ideology, the party faces a question of tactics, whether it wants to confront Clinton and the Democrats head on, as it did in 1995, or compromise, as it did in 1996.

Activists such as Bauer favor confrontation. But many of those who already hold elected office believe the path to future electoral success is paved with small, incremental steps.

``One of the things that the American people want is to see all of us work together to get things done,'' said Ohio Gov. George Voinovich.

Noting that it took 60 years for Democrats to build up the modern federal government, Ohio Republican Party Chairman Bob Bennett suggested that ``when you're a guppy trying to eat a whale, you have to take it one bite at a time.''

Even House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., the symbol of conservative confrontation two years ago, now espouses compromise.

Speaking here about tax cuts, he signaled a willingness to accept less than the GOP's call for broad, across-the-board tax cuts.

``I would take targeted tax cuts, untargeted tax cuts ... the direction is right.''

Publicly, Republicans don't seem overly concerned about losing the White House again.

Most of the country's large states are led by popular GOP governors who have already won second terms with resounding victories. Moreover, the GOP this year held control of the House and Senate for the first time in 68 years.

And, for now, most members of the party are focusing on the 1998 elections, when 36 governor's offices are up for election, along with a third of the Senate and the entire U.S. House.

But they know that those elections are just the next step to the next election, in 2000.