Can The Right Survive Success?

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