"the Tide Is Still Running"

By William R. Doerner

Political movements, like Hollywood hostesses, are sometimes judged by the star power of their guest lists. By that standard, the 1,500 delegates who gathered in Washington last week for the 13th annual Conservative Political Action Conference had every reason to congratulate themselves for having arranged the hottest party in town, and many proceeded to do so with gusto.

The procession of their podium guests was not only headed by the President of the U.S., who has addressed the assembly for each of his five years in the White House. It was also graced by Vice President George Bush, Congressman Jack Kemp, former U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick--and just about anyone who is even tempted by a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 1988, including some who once probably would not have bothered to return a CPAC phone call. Said David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, one of 55 sponsors of the conference: "The conservative tide is still running."

While the parade of speakers preached to the converted about the Soviet threat, support for the President's Strategic Defense Initiative and states' rights, the overall theme of the three-day meeting, "Looking Toward the 1990s," reflected the conservatives' robust confidence in the future of their movement. Speakers and delegates alike credited Reagan with having permanently changed the national agenda to make the conservative voice not just relevant but dominant. "The country is in an antiliberal mood," said Howard Phillips, chairman of the Conservative Caucus. "Ronald Reagan has ridden this trend." The rightward tilt of young voters, who chose Reagan over Democrat Walter Mondale in 1984 by 60% to 40%, provided further cause for optimism. Said Attorney General Edwin Meese: "The excitement on the campuses is all from the conservative movement."

The mood of self-congratulation, while understandable, is not entirely warranted by the facts, as some conservatives themselves concede. A number of conservative organizations have lately encountered resistance in fund raising, evidently because many longtime contributors have decided that the cause has essentially triumphed. The President alluded to this problem by warning of the "danger of growing soft with victory." Conservative financial backing is "needed now as never before," Reagan told his followers, because "the Washington liberals and the San Francisco Democrats aren't extinct"--the latter a reference to the 1984 Democratic Convention that nominated Mondale.

Even more troubling for true believers is the movement's failure to bring * ideological purity to Government. Conservatives reg- ularly rail against U.S. foreign policy for lacking sufficient anti-Communist emphasis, and while the conservative social agenda receives lip-service support from the Administration, few proponents of voluntary school prayer and a ban on abortions think those goals are much closer to reality now than in 1980.

Most conservatives absolve Reagan of responsibility for such lapses--but not all. Says Phillips: "As a ceremonial leader he gets an A, but he gets no A for his performance as chief of Government." Others regard the half-a-loaf outcome as natural. Reagan and his men, says the President's onetime campaign manager John Sears, "found out that governing was more complicated than they thought."

Among Republicans with an eye on the top of the 1988 presidential ticket, the only prominent absentee was former Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker, who declined to appear because he had expected to be out of the country. Some, including North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms and TV Evangelist Pat Robertson, were accorded podium time mostly as a reward for long-standing ardor. Others, notably former Delaware Governor Pierre S. du Pont IV, were long shots by any standard. A clear favorite was Kirkpatrick, a "heroine to conservatives" as Keene called her, who delivered a foreign policy address to the convention. Kirkpatrick called on the U.S. to "let the world know we stand with those who stand for freedom," a reference to anti-Soviet guerrillas who are fighting without U.S. military aid. One of the most prominent of these leaders, Angolan Rebel Jonas Savimbi, won a standing ovation when he appeared at the convention.

The most closely watched national figure was Vice President Bush, who has been conducting a highly visible courtship of conservative support in an attempt to deny it to longtime Movement Hero Jack Kemp. The first tangible evidence that Bush's strategy may be paying off emerged Saturday, when the results of an annual poll of some 400 conservative true believers were announced. In a field of ten hypothetical G.O.P. presidential candidates, Bush wound up a clear and surprising first, with 36.3% of the vote. That was better than double the 16.9% share accorded Kemp, who was last year's winner. Ever anxious to display his conservative credentials, Bush in his speech reminded delegates that he had supported Barry Goldwater's losing presidential bid in 1964 and declared that a majority of Americans now endorse "the ( principles for which we stood."

The Kemp party countered the Bush poll with one of their own, which showed the Congressman leading Bush 55% to 12%. The Congressman's appearance on the conference platform was attended by convention-like atmospherics, with youthful supporters waving placards and shouting "We want Kemp!" Addressing members of the audience as "fellow revolutionaries," Kemp assured them that "our ideas are on the march and nothing can stop them." He drew loud applause with a pledge not only to pursue research on Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative but also to deploy it. That is a matter on which Reagan has still not made a final decision. Before this audience, however, it was no risk to take a position more hard-line than that of the President.

With reporting by Hays Gorey/Washington