Standing Pat?

NEW Hampshire's first-in-the-nation primary seems designed to keep the GOP race going to the bitter end, and maybe beyond to a brokered convention. Pat Buchanan won with 27 per cent of the vote and must now be considered a serious candidate. Front-runner Bob Dole ran behind with 26 per cent, so narrow a margin as almost to amount to a tie vote. Senator Dole's failure to score higher is damaging, but hardly enough to justify predicting his defeat. And Lamar Alexander's third-place finish at 23 per cent was indeed better than expected. With Mr. Buchanan supported by the grass-roots, Mr. Dole by the party establishment, and Mr. Alexander by the media, there is a candidate for every taste. So why the gloom?

A British saying has it that 'the Tory Party never panics -- except in a crisis.' In the last few weeks, the GOP establishment has outdone the Tories; it has panicked without the excuse of a crisis, and indeed in the face of a historic realignment. Pat Buchanan's strong showings in Louisiana, Iowa, and New Hampshire are treated as harbingers of the end of civilization. Grown politicians threaten not to support him in the (still unlikely) event of his nomination. And there is much dark muttering that the new voters supporting him are -- O Horror! -- not Republicans, but people voting Republican for the first time. (Buchanan Democrats?)

But things are not as bad as they would seem to those whose interest is limited to differences within the party. Mr. Buchanan's showings are a tribute to his skills as a campaigner, which everyone has long acknowledged. They reflect also the allure of his positions and highlight the narrow ideological turf the GOP has been defending since the Bush years and, yes, even since the Gingrich revolution.

Mr. Buchanan's issues come in three clusters: moral, cultural, and economic. These attract three broad constituencies. Mr. Buchanan has gathered his support by opposing abortion and gay rights, by affirming family values, and by criticizing a degraded popular culture. On most of these issues he is at one with other conservative leaders, though he sometimes speaks in a distinctive voice. His opposition to racial and gender quotas and to unrestricted immigration gives him access to the more secular 'radical middle' owned by Ross Perot. But his appeal to blue-collar voters anxious about their economic future takes him furthest from Republican -- and conservative -- orthodoxy. For here his appeal is frankly protectionist.

NATIONAL REVIEW has for many years urged the GOP to adopt many of the positions taken by Mr. Buchanan. It is a weakness of the Dole - Gingrich Congress that these issues have been either neglected (official English), or soft-pedaled (immigration, racial quotas). Red-meat issues have yielded to green eyeshades. And the GOP comes off looking like etiolated, bloodless bookkeepers.

But Mr. Buchanan's economic stance is troublesome. And it is an aspect not only of his economic position but also of his isolationism -- America v. the world. He has rightly identified a strong vein of worry about the economic future among middle-class, especially blue-collar, Americans. These worries are real. But Buchanan's protectionist remedy is flat-out wrong: American workers benefit from selling their goods in global markets, and American consumers benefit from buying goods without the taxation of tariffs. Above all, John O. McGinnis points out in this issue what free trade protects: the American people, against high levels of government regulation and taxation.

But political disagreements, even fundamental ones, are the stuff of coalition politics every party must learn to live with. The GOP needs the votes of those attracted by Pat Buchanan in the primaries, and it is reassuring that he has promised to stay within the Republican party, the alternative being a nagging third party whose only accomplishment would be to keep the Democrats in power. There are, after all, many points on which the combatants can agree. Mr. Buchanan endorses a flat tax, his opponents have paid some deference to official English. Before the recent spate of negative ads, these men were all friends and occasional colleagues.

The anxieties that are appeased by calls for protectionism need to be dealt with. But that policy is uniquely divisive in GOP ranks. The incomes of both low-paid and highly skilled workers have suffered from indiscriminate immigration policies and the prospects of white male workers are plainly hurt by race and gender quotas. Here are issues on which economic conservatives can give Pat Buchanan and his supporters more than they could get from the synthetic and short-term relief of tariff barriers. And if such a compromise unites the GOP, it would also split the Democrats, capturing more blue-collar voters than the Republicans have seen since the Gipper's heyday.

High stakes. The GOP establishment should play to win big, not hoard its chips for fear of losing. And so should Pat Buchanan.