Southern Comfort

OUT IN THE WILDERNESS FOR ONLY A FEW MONTHS, the Republican Party is sorely in need of a new Moses. After a tense five-way contest, a badly divided G.O.P. chose Haley Barbour as its national chairman, charging the portly Mississippian with the daunting task of bringing together moderates, conventional conservatives and a right wing fixated on "family values," notably abortion.

A committee member from Yazoo City, and a Washington lobbyist, Barbour, 45, was conservative enough to serve as a Reagan adviser but smooth enough to attract the support of country-club Republicans anxious to check the influence of the religious right, whose delegates favored former Missouri Governor John Ashcroft or party tactician Spencer Abraham. Rather than flock under ideological banners, however, most of the R.N.C. members avoided ideology. The loudest applause of the day came when Rich Bond, the G.O.P.'s retiring chairman, urged that the 1996 platform drop its strict antiabortion plank.