Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 11, 1995 TAG: 9504120013
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GARY MILLER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The Republicans' future success will depend on their ability to keep this difficult coalition together.
The only chance for the Democrats, conversely, is to split the Republican coalition. They must recast themselves as the party of business.
Until the '60s, the economic liberals of the New Deal avoided any identification with social liberalism. Being Democratic was perfectly respectable in the Bible Belt.
The Republicans had plenty of social liberals, too, such as Gov. Nelson Rockefeller of New York, who were supporters of black aspirations, abortion rights, civil liberties and the secular state.
This all changed in the '60s when the Democratic Party added ``social liberal'' to the ``economic liberal'' label.
This position invited Republicans to take a social conservative position to build the ``emerging Republican majority.''
Becoming a credible voice for social conservatism required a great deal of effort and caused much turmoil within Republican ranks.
It was Newt Gingrich's remarkable coalition-building activities in the House of Representatives that permitted the final identification of social conservatism with the GOP.
The coalition of social and economic conservatism has enormous electoral potential.
It combines one intense minority - endowed with abundant financial resources - with another intense minority willing to walk precincts and stuff envelopes.
And it isolates in the Democratic Party the small proportion of America that identifies itself as both economically and socially liberal.
But the Republican coalition has a weakness at its core.
At the heart of social conservatism is populism - which has long identified the central problem in American government as its tendency to be used for the benefit of privileged economic interests.
Many of the interests long mistrusted by populists - banks, insurance firms, Wall Street houses, Fortune 500 manufacturers and transportation companies - have been accustomed to looking to the Republican Party for assistance.
Gingrich will find it politically costly to respond to those economic interests in today's climate.
A case in point is the Mexican bailout.
Business leaders, made confident by the success of the North American Free Trade Agreement and other free-trade efforts, have been betting on Mexican economic development.
The old GOP would have been in the forefront of bailout efforts, and the pro-business wing of the Republican Party still wants to go that way.
But the populist following of Republican presidential aspirants such as Sen. Phil Gramm makes it impossible for the party to be united behind such a policy.
These Republicans feel betrayed that their tax dollars will be used to bail out wealthy investors who sent their dollars overseas.
Unspoken are populist fears of being swamped by hordes of non-English-speaking immigrants bringing illiteracy and crime.
The result was the first revolt of Newt's House.
While he had endorsed President Clinton's attempt to stabilize the peso, 14 Republicans defied Gingrich and attempted to force an immediate debate on the loan package.
Where does that leave the Democratic Party? Some strategists are calling for a return to liberal roots.
But the traditional Democratic position was a winner only against the traditional Republican position.
The Democrats cannot win as long as they allow the Republican Party to maintain the Wall Street-Main Street coalition.
Really, the Democrats have only one long-term option: to continue to find issues that divide the Republicans along the same fault line as the Mexican bailout.
As the Republicans take the social conservative position, the Democrats must claim the disaffected pro-business constituency.
Clinton has already made some progress toward the goal of identifying the Democratic Party with economic development.
He started down the right road with his emphasis on the economy during the campaign. Many business representatives applauded his reductions in the budget deficit and the passage of NAFTA.
A Democratic Party that took the lead on other matters of concern to business could cast Republicans as social extremists and make it respectable again to vote Democratic.
A more pro-business Democratic position would not only force the Republicans into difficult choices, it would also isolate the social conservatives.
It is important to remember that most Americans are in favor of some access to abortion. Only a minority of Americans feels strongly about prayer in schools or supports job discrimination against gays.
Business leaders, especially in big business, are just one segment of the American population that is uneasy about the social agenda of the new Republicans.
Many Fortune 500 companies regularly contribute to Planned Parenthood and the National Organization for Women, and they prefer not to have their businesses disrupted by crusades against gays.
Most business leaders, in fact, see nothing but trouble in the culture wars planned by the Republican right.
The ideal Democratic platform should help identify common ground between social liberals and business interests, based on their shared suspicion of the socially divisive populist agenda.
An ideal Democratic platform would combine a moderate position on abortion, on separation of church and state and on free trade, and include a cost-effective test for business regulation.
Neither social liberals nor economic conservatives could object.
The accommodation of Democrats and business interests could be just as painful and slow as the 20-year process that drove social liberals out of the Republican Party.
But the alternative is to allow the Republicans to maintain a coalition that isolates the Democrats and labels them as immoral and anti-business.
The new Republican coalition is powerful not because of populism alone, but because of its unaccustomed (and historically unlikely) coalition with economic conservatism.
A Democratic candidate who united business interests with other segments leery of the conservative social agenda would certainly look like the Antichrist to right-wing talk-show hosts.
But such a candidate might also win.
Gary Miller, a professor of political economy at Washington University in St. Louis, co-authored "American National Government: People, Institutions and Policies.''
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