No Right-On for Reagan

If anyone can mollify hard-line conservatives, it should be their idol, Ronald Reagan. That is what Chief of Staff Howard Baker thought when a handful of right-wingers who had been invited to the White House began leveling accusations that the Administration was selling out the contras in Nicaragua. Baker had arranged for the President to drop by and explain in person that his tentative backing for a Central American peace plan implied no lessening of U.S. support for the Nicaraguan rebels. But this time his remarks were greeted only with cold silence; visibly irritated, Reagan shrugged and walked away. Said Burton Pines, vice president of the Heritage Foundation and one of the visitors: "People who have been around the President say that was probably the most chilling reception he had ever had from his supporters."

It was certainly not the first time Reagan had disappointed his bedrock constituency. Throughout his presidency, staunch conservatives have sporadically complained that Reagan in action has never matched the ideological oratory that so thrills them on the stump. But as the silent tableau in the Roosevelt Room indicated, their dissatisfaction is plumbing new depths, which could make trouble not only for Reagan but also for the Republican aspirants to succeed him.

In the past, some of the conservatives' loudest complaints have focused on Reagan's failure to push hard on such social issues as abortion and school prayer. The President's nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court has stilled some, but not all, of the gripes about domestic policy; conservatives now grumble that Reagan is abandoning his "economic bill of rights" and promoting a leftish, catastrophic health-insurance scheme. But, says Paul Weyrich, head of the conservative group called the Free Congress Foundation, "the real feelings are on foreign policy issues."

To moderates, Reagan's tentative endorsement of the peace plan signed in August by five Central American Presidents may have seemed grudging and tepid. But to the right it sounded like the crack of doom for any effort to save Nicaragua from Communism. Some conservatives are also aghast at what they view as the Administration's headlong rush into a missile treaty with the Soviets, and in particular by its retreat from strict verification demands. Says Patrick Buchanan, once Reagan's communications director: "We are better off with 574 missiles that can land on the Soviet Union than we are with a damn treaty."

Conservatives were further alarmed last week by a report in the Washington Times that Reagan had chosen Paul Nitze to head the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Actually, White House sources say no appointment is imminent; they speculate that the story was leaked in order to mobilize opposition to Nitze, who was once viewed as a hawk but is now thought by - conservatives to be too eager for a grand compromise with Moscow on strategic weapons. The right would prefer Edward Rowny, who, like Nitze, is a special adviser to the President on arms-control matters. Ronald Lehman, a member of the U.S. negotiating team at Geneva, is being talked of as a compromise choice.