Can The Right Survive Success?

By Laurence I. Barrett

Telling footnote for future histories of the American right, circa 1990: at the Conservative Political Action Conference this month, vendors offered eleven different Oliver North buttons and two Fawn Hall pins. One T shirt depicted a soldier with an assault rifle over the slogan WASTE THE RED BASTARDS. But any conservative who might have wanted a George Bush button for his lapel was out of luck. The nation's nominal Conservative in Chief was missing both in person and in likeness.

Bush's absence from the conclave of 45 conservative groups underscores the right wing's dilemma in the post-cold war world: a dearth of active heroes and of crackling issues. Ronald Reagan was yesteryear's big draw, taking the conservative movement into the White House and redefining American politics. But now that the Reagan revolution is rooted in Washington and peaceful revolutions are wasting reds in Nicaragua, Eastern Europe and even Moscow, conservatives are left with a listless, morning-after feeling.

New enemies and new issues are needed badly. Anticommunism was "the glue that holds the movement together," as David Keene of the American Conservative Union puts it. Says Heritage Foundation Vice President Burton Pines: "It is a sign of enormous triumph that there are no galvanizing issues for conservatives today." It is a sign of danger as well: in periodicals and forums, even as conservatives celebrate their recent accomplishments, they fret about imminent splintering.

Many of the organizations are short of cash because donors think the crusades are over. The Conservative Digest folded this winter for want of patronage. A contrarian publication, Conservative Review, arrived in February with a lead piece condemning neoconservatives for their opposition to protectionism. Heresy survives among the right-wing factions.

Neoconservatives, though few in number, wield influence by providing a modern, intellectual gloss to free-market arguments. Generally, they backed Reagan. Yet now, one of their leading advocates, Irving Kristol, decries the "intellectual vacuum within the Republican Party" and predicts a "decade of continuous frustration" for the movement.

Georgia Congressman Newt Gingrich admonished the crowd of activists at the conservative convention "to recognize that the '90s are not the '80s and certainly not the '70s." He warned against wasting energy on waging "holy war" over differences within the movement. As a backbencher, Gingrich used to ) enjoy making jihad. Today, as minority whip, he talks soberly of "opposition conservatism" being passe: "We must invent governing conservatism."

Yet Bush's cautious "stewardship" of the nation is part of the conservatives' problem. He has pleased the right with his rear-guard defense of Reaganomics and delighted it with his invasion of Panama. But he temporizes on many other visceral issues, like China policy and abortion. Little is heard from the White House about school prayer or against the feminist agenda. Says David Keene: "The White House attitude toward the movement is to tickle its belly and hope that it doesn't get too disgruntled in public." With no national leader to serve as either totem or target, the right suffers three specific conundrums:

THE SEARCH FOR SATAN

Rummaging about for a suitable foe, some conservatives seize on Capitol Hill. The catchphrase of the moment is "the Imperial Congress." But trying to set up the Democratic Congress as Great Satan flops on both philosophical and tactical grounds. William F. Buckley recently defended Congress as "the likeliest repository of conservative affinity." The legislature, he argued, is the most effective antidote to "executive supremacy." Looking ahead to this year's elections, Ed Rollins, director of the Republican congressional campaign committee, discerns no overarching themes. "We're doing candidate- driven races," Rollins says. "We've got to win them one at a time."

If Congress will not serve as villain, there is always the public's revulsion with the drug trade and violent crime. But Democrats have blurred the issue with their own tough-cop patter. Hawks could make great sport with some new Ayatullah or a resurgent Fidel Castro. Tehran, however, is making sensible noises, and Havana seems impotent. The conservatives' search for demons goes on.

COUNTRY-CLUB GENES

The return of abortion as a polarizing subject last year reminded populist conservatives that the President is only a tepid ally on a variety of hot moral issues. By refusing to denounce pro-choice Republicans, Bush flashed his repressed country-club genes. The religious right, in retreat since the Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart scandals, is beginning to feel abandoned by the Republicans. Paul Weyrich, the organizer who helped lure preachers into the G.O.P. a dozen years ago, discerns a "re-emergence of the old Republican Party . . . a party that doesn't particularly like Evangelicals or Fundamentalists or other people of strong religious persuasion."

Bush must rely on moderates and independents more heavily than Reagan did. That reliance forces to the surface a variety of fault lines, including splits over defense spending. While attempting to minimize cuts in the military budget, Bush must still trim enough to pay for the token increases he has promised in domestic programs. The risk is that no one will be satisfied.

THE REPUBLICAN RAINBOW

Some of the boldest conservatives have yearned for years to lure enough blacks and Hispanics away from the Democrats to form a governing majority that extends beyond the White House. A few even argue that the right wing must forthrightly admit error in opposing civil rights legislation of the 1960s. As Housing Secretary, Jack Kemp is attempting to make "empowerment" of the poor more than a slogan by training public-housing tenants to manage and even own their projects. The Administration is also reviving the long-standing G.O.P. proposal to create "enterprise zones" that ostensibly would bring business back to impoverished neighborhoods.

Harsh political calculations impinge on these good intentions. Many Democrats abandoned the party and turned Republican in the first place to fight integration, and today bridle at suggestions that they embrace affirmative action. Confederate banners remain in vogue at Southern political rallies; when G.O.P. Chairman Lee Atwater suggested that the Stars and Bars might offend black sensitivities, he had to explain away his temerity ("In no way did I mean to offend anyone"). As for Kemp's programs, they are slow in getting under way and starved by the budget crunch.

Kemp has some company among conservatives in promoting imaginative ideas. Illinois Congressman John Porter has proposed the gradual conversion of Social Security to a private system that would give each worker a personal retirement fund to be individually invested. The new arrangement presumably would provide greater benefits relative to cost. Around the country, some infant local think tanks are also innovating. In Denver the Independence Institute is circulating petitions for an amendment to the Colorado constitution aimed at shrinking "giantism" in the public school system. The measure would convert state education subsidies into individual vouchers so that families could shop for the most attractive classroom "buy."

Such schemes may provoke debate, but they fall far short of providing a rallying cry for right-wingers. Where Social Security is concerned, no significant change is feasible without strong presidential leadership. Bush, mindful of the fierce geriatric lobby, insists, "I don't want to tamper with the Social Security system."

What keeps the conservative movement's struggle with success from turning into a full-blown crisis is the absence of effective competition. The Democrats as a party and the liberals as a secular sect are far more bereft of direction. It is impossible to imagine a liberal gathering where one champion would warrant two or three different lapel buttons, let alone the eleven bearing the likeness of Ollie North.