Liddy the Closet Liberal?

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If Elizabeth Dole has a shot at the Republican nomination, it is because of women like Bonnie Curzio, a stay-at-home mom and independent voter. When she heard that Dole was coming to Des Moines, Iowa, last week to announce her exploratory committee, Curzio bundled her 10-year-old daughter into the car and headed for the convention center. Curzio, 40, didn't know much about Dole, but she was drawn to the event in part because Dole is a woman--the first viable female presidential candidate in American history. "I guess that does make a difference to me, though I don't consider myself a feminist," Curzio said as she and 700 others waited in a jammed auditorium for Dole to arrive. "It would be historic if she won."

Dole is betting on that sense of history to move an army of Bonnie Curzios--women who might not otherwise vote in a primary--to lift her to victory over Texas Governor George W. Bush. But the former American Red Cross president and two-time Cabinet Secretary will have to offer more than personality and symbolism if she hopes to turn inchoate interest into real support. Curzio and others like her want to know the candidate's positions on the issues, but Dole didn't provide many answers in her canned, 25-min. Des Moines speech. If she had a theme beyond her resume, it was the nobility of public service--eloquent at times but loaded with platitudes. Her signature line--that Ronald Reagan's famous question "Are you better off today than you were four years ago?" should be rephrased to ask, "Are we better?"--echoes Al Gore, who in 1996 began describing "an America not just better off, but better." And in what has quickly become her custom, the candidate fled the event without taking questions from the audience or reporters.

Dole's reluctance to define her politics has opened the door to critics eager to do it for her. Several leading religious conservatives have started attacking her--not for positions that she's taken (there aren't many) but for the apparent ideological bent of the staff members she has hired. Chuck Cunningham, former national-operations director for the Christian Coalition, zapped an e-mail to scores of top conservative activists in early March lambasting Dole for choosing Linda DiVall, whom Cunningham describes as "the left's favorite Republican pollster." Citing DiVall's past work for such "reliably liberal organizations" as Planned Parenthood and the Human Rights Campaign, a gay-rights group, Cunningham warned Dole that hiring DiVall "sends a deafening message to conservatives: Get to the back of the bus and shut up!" Dole has said she opposes abortion except in cases of rape, incest and where the life of the mother is threatened, but die-hard conservatives worry about her staff's influence. Cunningham's Liddy-the-Closet-Liberal complaint was soon picked up by others, including Sheila Moloney, executive director of the conservative Eagle Forum. Moloney calls Dole's selection of advisers--with its emphasis on Eastern Republican operatives like political strategist Kieran Mahoney and committee manager Tom Daffron--"troubling."