Rot on the Right

Judging by the doctrinaire platform going before the Republican Convention this week, the conservative coalition that Ronald Reagan constructed 12 years ago seems as robust as ever. Just below the surface, however, the right wing suffers a mid-life crisis that threatens its future -- as well as the party's. The movement lacks an inspirational leader, a unifying cause and an external enemy big enough to outweigh its internal divisions.

A symptom of the malady: Pat Buchanan, who assaulted Bush from the right in the early primaries, is searching for a new label to replace "conservative." His sister and campaign manager, Bay Buchanan, explains, "We need something broader and more relevant. The movement was defined by what no longer exists, the cold war, and still uses a vocabulary now out of date." The fact that Bush gets diminishing credit for the U.S. victory in the cold war during his watch is a larger sign of rot on the right. "There's an amazing disconnect," says one of Bush's top campaign advisers, "between the President and conservative leaders. They can't forget that he didn't come out of their movement the way Reagan did." Nor does Bush get much respect for his vigorous pandering to right-wing concerns.

Reagan's great trick in 1980 was to unite the three main sects of "wingers": the better-dead-than-Red faction, whose main concern was fighting communism; the religious right, interested in moral issues such as abortion; and fiscal rebels for whom the great demons were high taxes and government regulation. Bush's cold-warrior credentials served as a visa when he crossed from the Establishment faction into Reagan country in 1980, but the fall of the Soviet Union has shattered the right's consensus on foreign policy. Bush admires pragmatic power-balance diplomacy of the Kissinger school. Others favor more crusading zeal, while still others want to curtail overseas involvement.

Buchanan's brand of neo-isolationism appealed to only a minority of voters during the primaries. Still, those who supported Buchanan's message managed to get his "America First" motto into the platform's final draft. Though proposals to phase out foreign aid and to castigate the Administration for granting China most-favored-nation status were voted down, the Buchanan camp did win a provision favoring tougher measures against illegal immigration from Mexico. The new plank supported placing "structures" along the border, a variation of Buchanan's idea of building frontier fences. "That's wacko," remarked Congressman Vin Weber of Minnesota, a conservative whose main concern is fiscal policy.

Weber belongs to the faction that has been pressing Bush to promote a bolder economic-growth program. After fencing over nuances with White House agents supervising the platform, the Weber group won a few concessions. One called for the "ultimate" repeal of the tax increases imposed in the 1990 deficit- reduction deal between Bush and Capitol Hill. That Bush went along with the compromise still rankles many conservatives, though others feel that the deficit would be even worse without it. Weber, who is quitting Congress, mourns the loss of fervor for Reaganomics. "It's discouraging," he says, "how little supply-side sentiment is left among elected Republicans."