Election '82: No Thunder from the Right

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The ultraconservatives miss the targets on their hit list

Two years ago, the National Conservative Political Action Committee was the scourge of the left, spending at least $1.2 million to help sweep away such liberal luminaries as Senators Frank Church, Birch Bayh, John Culver and George McGovern. Scenting total victory, NCPAC Chairman Terry Dolan immediately announced a 1982 hit list of 20 Senators, including such improbable targets as Pat Moynihan of New York and Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts. Political realities eventually shrank the list to five, but NCPAC still raised $10 million and spent $4.5 million in the 1982 elections. Yet last week, for all its thunder, the New Right could claim partial credit only for the defeat of a single, vulnerable incumbent, Democrat Howard Cannon of Nevada.

At a post-election press conference, New Right leaders blamed a "flawed strategy in the White House" for their failure. "This could have been a year of conservative realignment," lamented Howard Phillips of the Conservative Caucus. NCPAC'S Dolan took what comfort he could in having made "a number of liberals very unhappy." But, he complained, "the 'stay the course' theme was essentially defensive. It did not point out what was wrong with the other side." During the campaign, Paul Weyrich of the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress had objected, "The liberals have by and large framed the issues."

Even if the economy had not overwhelmed the New Right's agenda for a return to "traditional values," the purge of 1980 would have been nearly impossible to repeat. NCPAC, which had carefully targeted high profile liberals in 1980, touched off a blunderbuss in this election, attacking too many candidates too soon. The New Right organization, while highly funded, did not have enough candidates ready to run. And this time the movement's targets were not complacently ignoring the threat. They fought back.

In several states, NCPAC commercials were kept off the air by victims' complaints that they were misleading or outright false, prompting NCPAC to file a federal suit charging censorship. Democratic Senator John Melcher, a veterinarian, countered a New Right commercial claiming he was "too liberal for Montana" with a TV ad of his own featuring cows. After a shot of "out-of-staters" carrying a briefcase full of money off a plane, one bemused bovine remarks, "Did ya hear about those city slickers bad-mouthing Doc Melcher? One of 'em was stepping in what they've been trying to sell."