ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, May 5, 1996 TAG: 9605060138
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: ANALYSIS
SOURCE: DICK POLMAN KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
NOTE: Lede
With his poll numbers down and his campaign parked in neutral, it didn't seem as if things could get much worse for Bob Dole.
They just got worse.
The Issue That Won't Go Away is back with a vengeance, threatening to rip apart the Republican Party - and deal a fresh blow to Dole's presidential prospects.
The nominee-in-waiting would rather not talk about abortion, but he won't be able to avoid it much longer. In recent days, two factions - the anti-abortion conservatives and the moderates who favor abortion rights - have aired their fundamental differences and vowed to fight at the August convention for the soul of the GOP.
Dole is trapped in the middle. No matter which way he turns, he risks a political disaster. Those he pleases will call him a leader; the disappointed will call him a panderer.
``It's a pretty grim situation,'' said Jack Pitney, former research director for the Republican National Committee and an author of the 1992 party platform. ``It's not smart politics for the Republican Party. This fight is about looking long-term, it's about the role of the religious right. They [the moderates] want to slow down what they see as the takeover of the religious right. But in the short term, this could do great damage to Bob Dole.''
A key Dole aide, who insisted on anonymity, lamented: ``We've tried our best to keep this whole thing under wraps. But I guess it was inevitable that things would blow up. It's accurate to say that things are a bit out of control. And if we continue to stress the issues that divide us, we're going to lose.''
Some key governors - Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey, Pete Wilson of California, George Pataki of New York and William Weld of Massachusetts - and congressional moderates want to dump the 12-year-old plank that calls for a constitutional amendment criminalizing abortion, with no exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother.
Wilson, Dole's California chairman, said last week that the plank was ``utterly unrealistic.''
But social conservatives see any assault on the plank as heresy.
Pat Buchanan said Thursday that if the plank is touched, many anti-abortion voters will sit out the election. His sister and campaign manager, Bay Buchanan, added: ``Our obligation to the unborn is far, far greater than our obligation to the party.''
Dole's choices for key convention posts appear to send mixed signals. Last week, Illinois Rep. Henry Hyde was named platform chairman; he vows to protect the anti-abortion plank. On the other hand, Whitman will be co-chair of the convention; she insists that the plank must go.
Jeff Bell, an economic consultant and a Republican abortion-rights opponent, has heard this talk and doesn't like it: ``There is no middle ground on an issue which has been debated for so long. Dole is a world-champion finesser. That's his natural instinct. But finessing the issue would be a killer for him.''
Across the great divide, Ann Stone, who heads Republicans for Choice, argued that Dole must act like a leader - and dump the plank: ``He simply has to do this. If he doesn't, he's dead in November.''
The Dole aide said: ``I think they both have some credibility in what they're saying. ... That's why we've reacted so slowly. If there was an easy answer, we would have done it already.''
Pitney said: ``The religious conservatives are our single most important constituency. They provide the foot soldiers and grass-roots strength.''
The moderates are still fuming about 1992, when they were stiffed at the Republican convention. They tried to remove the anti-abortion plank, but were crushed by the Bush administration.
Tanya Melich, a New York delegate, recalls: ``It was the politics of intolerance. They were saying, `Our way is the only way,' but their way didn't respect the separation of church and state.''
``This is the kind of problem Democrats used to have - fighting with their own activists,'' said Alan Abramowitz, a political analyst at Emory University in Atlanta.
``We haven't formulated a plan on how we'll handle it,'' the Dole aide said.
Conservative leader William Bennett wants to drop the plank and add softer language that would declare abortion to be morally wrong. This new plank would argue, in essence, that the way to end abortion is to change the culture, not to criminalize the practice.
To Bell, softer language is tantamount to surrender: ``If you just say that abortion is a bad thing, that's meaningless. If there's no way, under the law, to protect unborn babies, that's useless.''
Abortion-rights opponents are looking for turncoats in their ranks. Reports persist that Christian Coalition executive director Ralph Reed may be open to softer language; he is concerned that a hard-line image might spark a voter backlash.
Reed tried to dispel any impression Saturday that he was out of step with other leaders of the anti-abortion movement, angrily dismissing as ``totally inaccurate'' a story in The New York Times saying he would accept changes in the GOP platform.
In a statement, the Christian Coalition said the article in Saturday's Times ``inaccurately states'' that Reed ``would be willing to accept rape and incest exceptions as a possible change in the wording of the pro-life plank of the Republican Party's platform.''
In an interview Friday for the article, Reed said he would accept changes in the party platform. He did not specify what those changes might be. He also said that he would accept a compromise on a law banning abortions - not the platform. Later, he objected to the article's characterization of the circumstances under which he would do so.
Reed said Saturday that the Christian Coalition favored an exception to an abortion ban only if the mother's life was in danger. In the Friday interview, Reed had said he would ``reluctantly'' accept exceptions in cases of rape and incest if that were the only way to get an anti-abortion law passed.
The New York Times contributed to this story.
LENGTH: Long : 112 lines KEYWORDS: POLITICS PRESIDENTby CNB