
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, September 3, 1995                   TAG: 9509020005
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: G-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

TO THE RIGHT

IT IS depressing to watch how routinely, how seemingly without squeamishness or embarrassment, Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole is abandoning decades-held beliefs in the interest of placating the far right wing of his party and enhancing his odds of winning the Republican nomination.

"Dole," says Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed approvingly, "has turned the spinnaker sail towards the populist political winds. He has in a sense accommodated himself and positioned himself to ride the new wave."

"Accommodated" is one way of putting it.

Dole's accommodation cuts across an array of issues, but consider just fiscal policy.

The senator from Kansas used to be considered a traditional conservative. That means, among other things, he wanted to keep spending within means.

In contrast with the supply-siders in his party who viewed tax cuts as an economic panacea - and who proceeded to unleash a flood of federal red ink - Dole worried about the deficit.

When Newt Gingrich and his allies seized control of the GOP platform in 1984, and prominently included a no-tax-increase pledge in it, Dole worried publicly about "boxing the president in." Before the 1988 New Hampshire primary, Dole declined to sign a no-tax pledge. He properly did not want to constrain presidential options in fiscal policy. Then-Vice President George Bush did sign the pledge, and went on to win.

But that was the old Dole. The new Dole supports huge tax cuts that would disproportionately fill the pockets of the rich while forcing big spending cuts in Medicare and other programs. He has also signed a pandering anti-tax pledge like the one he refused to sign in 1988.

"It is less important what his intellectual convictions are than that he continue to deliver on the threshold demands of the new party," says Reed.

Is it really less important?

by CNB