Yearning to be free.

YEARNING TO BE FREE

IN THE AFTERMATH OF Iowa and New Hampshire, conservatives ask: Why did Jack Kemp fail to become the undisputed champion of the Cause? He was right on the issues. Right on foreign policy--support for the Contras, skepticism about the INF treaty, the imperative for SDI. Right on domestic issues--abortion, prayer in schools, Reaganomics, et al. Yet he failed to ignite conservative fires.

The only conservative entitled to claim any degree of triumph is Pat Robertson, whose success thus far is best quantified by the number of Democrats he has led across the party line to vote in Republican contests. Robertson tapped into an unmined vein of conservatism, namely the social issues, which had been given short shrift by Ronald Reagan, despite his copious rhetoric.

So it must be asked: Was Jack Kemp's disappointing presidential bid doomed from the start by a closet yearning among the conservatives to return to the good old days of opposition politics? Of being able to lob in the artillery shells from outside the Establishment? Washington insiders are beginning to credit the heretical notion that conservatives this year may actually prefer to see a Democrat elected in 1988, so that they can rebuild, return to the politics of yore when highly visible confrontations with the Left and telling direct-mail solicitations elevated conservative insiders to national prominence. It has suddenly dawned on these conservatives that the control of the GOP is now held by Establishment Republicans, not Reaganites. Indeed, the Reagan insurgency was just that, an insurgency, and it is now ending. The counter-revolution is under way.

How else explain the Dole and Bush success in capturing the allegiance of movement types? Conspicuously on the outside are the once-powerful wizards of the New Right, muzzled by the Reagan White House time after time ("Where else can they go?"), rendered politically impotent by the success of the Reagan Presidency.

Imagine, for a moment, what the conservatives of yesterday might have done with the revelations about Panama's General Manuel Noriega if those revelations had not occurred on Reagan's watch. In a Gephardt or Dukakis or Simon or Cuomo Administration, conservative demands to abrogate the Carter-era treaty and reassert American control over the Panama Canal would have been deafening. Instead, we hear a tepid defense of the Reagan Administration's strategic interests in pursuing a dalliance with Noriega. Beyond that, mainly silence.

The street argument, then, is as follows. The hard Right, unable to get action through direct persuasion and frequent warnings of treason within the White House, boycotted any candidate in 1988, subconsciously or otherwise. That's why, the logic goes, Kemp, although he was ideally poised to catapult himself into the post-Reagan era of GOP politics, was never able to forge a conservative alliance. "If we lose the Presidency," veteran political strategist Eddie Mahe said recently, "I think the whole conservative movement is launched again."

The politics of opposition are much more appealing than the burdens of government-by-coalition. This is especially true when the prospect is that conservatives, under any Republican successor to Reagan, would at best be junior partners. The rift between the New Right and the GOP Establishment began to show early in the Reagan Administration, when the then Republican National Committee chairman, Richard Richards, told reporters at a National Press Club news conference that he did not think the New Right would be important in the 1982 midterm elections. New Right leaders were outraged. They viewed the RNC chairman's comments as a clear attempt to undercut their influence and, equally important, their fundraising.

Conservatives had viewed the 1980 election results as proof that they had successfully stormed the citadels of power and now deserved to be installed in them. Recall the frequent demands by conservatives to have one of their own within the White House--Joe Coors, Bill Clark, Paul Laxalt as Chief of Staff--to help Ronald Reagan screw his courage to the conservative sticking place. Those demands were consistently rebuffed. As the Reagan years wore on, and moderates and insiders received the plum appointments, right-wingers gradually reconciled themselves to "credentialing" conservatives for leadership in some future Administration. This period left conservatives with a sour taste that still lingers.

SO THE failure of Kemp to ignite flames in the conservative belly may be best explained by the early deflation and ultimate collapse of conservative delusions in the Reagan years. Now the critical question is whether conservatives will rally to the GOP in the fall, particularly if the election looks close. The answer depends largely on the Democratic ticket and its published programs and policies. Conservatives may show moderate Republicans that they do, in fact, have another place to go, another option to indulge, i.e., the politics of opposition, which built the movement's power in the first place.

It's too bad for Jack Kemp that the closet yearning to be unattached surfaced just as he was hitting his stride and when the chance to bear the standard was almost within his grasp. What a valentine message to send to Kemp: Free again, Jack. Sorry. Subliminally always, Your friends on the Right.