Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 13, 1993 TAG: 9403180006
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Cal Thomas
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
THE AIMLESS Republican Party, which has sent 14 ``policy councils'' around the country to find out what it should believe, could learn something from the just-concluded annual gathering of Britain's Conservative Party in Blackpool.
Though still in power, the Tories are way down in the polls. At their meeting they rediscovered ``traditional values'' (yes, those were the words used) as a strategy to win back disgruntled supporters.
Prime Minister John Major spoke of ideas that move people beyond boredom as he blasted ``fashionable opinion'' and urged his party to move beyond economic issues to embrace ``old-core values'' that would include a return to education basics, a new attack on violent crime and a clampdown on pornography, especially child pornography. (That last issue would play well for Republicans because the Clinton Justice Department is attempting to relax child pornography laws for the first time in 12 years.)
Philip Stephens of London's Financial Times wrote, ``The perception of most in the cabinet is that on issues such as law and order and family values, a much tougher stance catches the public mood.''
Last week, one of the few credible 1996 GOP presidential candidates, former HUD Secretary Jack Kemp, voiced that theme in a well-received address to the national meeting of Concerned Women for America.
Kemp's speech wedded his economic philosophy to moral values, the real strength and base of Republican victories since 1968. ``We live at a time when freedom and democracy are marching throughout the world,'' said Kemp, ``yet traditional values are under siege at home. We live at a time when the world is looking to America for leadership, but our nation's leadership is looking inward to questions of its own purpose and meaning.''
It was a nice philosophical setup for what would follow. Kemp said senseless violence had turned ``playgrounds into killing fields.'' He lamented the divorce rate, which has quadrupled in the past 30 years, and said, ``it is not judgmental to suggest that most [divorces] aren't much comfort to a child. I think we can agree with the novelist who wrote `every broken family is the death of a small civilization.'''
He criticized government social spending, which has increased by 400 percent at the federal level, costing the taxpayers $5 trillion, but failed to reduce poverty. And, with conviction and eloquence, he raised the issue that many in the GOP leadership think is too hot to touch:
``Every single year, there is the tragic silence of a million newborn cries that will never be heard. Talents that will never be developed. Potential we will never see. Books never authored. Inventions never made ... the right to life is a gift of God, not a gift of the state. Abortion must never rest easy on the conscience of our nation.''
Kemp challenged the view prevalent in his party that social issues divide and that a choice must be made between economic growth and cultural renewal: ``This is a false division and destructive choice. It's not one that can be made.''
He said, ``There is a natural alliance between the creation of wealth and the cultivation of character. Economic success is built on moral foundations - on the rule of law, faith, discipline, contracts, savings, integrity, a work ethic. Sound families that elevate these beliefs are not just one strength among many. They are the source of much of our culture's strength and future.''
Kemp knows that a political party's positions must appeal not only to the mind but also to the emotions, the heart and soul. A perceived lack of convictions and moral direction is what cost George Bush his re-election to the presidency.
No party or government can re-create souls, but parties, candidates and government can call people to something deeper and more important than materialistic pursuits. Britain's Conservative Party has rediscovered this essential ingredient in political life. So has Jack Kemp. Now the question is, will the Republican Party?
Los Angeles Times Syndicate
by CNB