Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 4, 1990 TAG: 9003042028
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAUL WEST THE BALTIMORE SUN
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Republicans are on a roll in presidential politics, he crowed, and communism is on the run around the globe. And yet, he added, "a lot of conservatives are discouraged."
Their malaise, at a time when a conservative president, George Bush, is enjoying near-record popularity, is one of the reasons some Republican consultants and activists believe their party's coalition is in danger of pulling apart over the next few years.
Cracks are deepening within the ranks of Republican voters, especially over abortion. The anti-communist glue that once bound Republicans is weakening as the Soviet bloc disintegrates.
The saving grace may be that the Democrats are in worse shape - out of touch with the country and showing no signs of revival, these analysts say. Otherwise, a serious recession could mean political disaster for the GOP.
"I think there is a lot of vulnerability in the coalition at this point," said Kevin Phillips, who publishes a political newsletter.
"For the first time since 1964, Republicans are more divided on cultural issues than Democrats," he said last week.
For the Republicans, abortion is a particularly sensitive issue. The party risks alienating younger voters if it continues to take an anti-abortion line in the aftermath of last year's abortion-limiting Supreme Court decision. But if the GOP backs down from its hard-line stance, it could lose many Catholics, evangelical Protestants and others who voted Republican in recent elections.
V. Lance Tarrance, a Republican pollster, said Democrats have failed to grasp the shifts in voter loyalties that have altered American politics over the past two decades. In the 1960s, Southerners defected to the Republican Party, followed by Catholics in the 1970s and young people in the 1980s.
"Democrats lost so much touch with the average American culturally, they will have a hard time getting it back," Phillips said. "But they have not lost touch with America economically."
Several of the factors that helped give the GOP a virtual lock on presidential elections are now becoming obsolete.
The end of the Cold War has loosened one of the few bonds that cut across differences within the Republican Party, said David Keene, president of the American Conservative Union. It also means the questions of which party can stand up to the Soviets and is strongest on national defense - two issues that benefited Republicans in the late 1970s and much of the 1980s - no longer matter as much to voters.
Racial politics, which helped wreck the Democrats' New Deal coalition in the South, may also be losing their potency. Last year, a black Democrat, Douglas Wilder, won the Virginia governorship by drawing votes from many of the same suburbanites who backed Bush the year before.
The religious right, a key element in the conservative movement that helped bring Ronald Reagan and Bush to power, has also begun to decline.
Paul Weyrich, a leading conservative theorist, said he was startled to find, during a recent nationwide speaking tour, that the fissures in the GOP coalition were "much greater, frankly, than I thought they were."
Despite the GOP's problems, there are no clear signs that the Democratic Party is on the verge of reclaiming the presidency, after losing five of the last six national elections. In fact, some Democratic strategists have already begun to conclude that their next real chance to win the White House may not come until 1996.
Not surprisingly, many Republicans agree.
"Can the Republicans blow it? Of course they can," former Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick said. "The fault lines are always there in these broad coalitions."
by CNB