THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, November 15, 1994 TAG: 9411150005
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: ANOTHER VIEW
SOURCE: By TOM TEEPEN
LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines
The Democrats suddenly have to wonder if they have a credible presidential candidate for 1996, but so do the Republicans, even in the afterglow of a by-election triumph that makes the White House seem almost a freebie.
The usual suspects are looking a bit shopworn, and it isn't clear that the GOP, increasingly beholden to the religious right, is capable of casting up promising new nominees with broad appeal.
Bob Dole has a bitter streak that some mistake for wit but that most Republicans found prohibitively unpleasant in his other bids for the nomination. He has not mellowed with age. Dole is a wine that, uncorked, goes to vinegar too fast.
Dan Quayle still makes many Republican hearts flutter but, sorry, he really is no brighter than his current speech writer. In the give and take of a presidential race, Quayle would be mostly take.
Pat Buchanan is an extremist unlikely to survive the long exposure of a campaign. The true-believer types love him, but would Americans go for a candidate who has flirted with the idea that we should annex western Canada to get more white people?
Jack Kemp could make a case to the general electorate and he might still serve as the fallback nominee, but Kemp has wandered out of favor with his party base, conservatives. Kemp's genuine concern over issues of racial justice and poverty have soured much of the party's right on him.
That Kemp of all people is now counted liberal by much of his party is evidence of just how far rightward the GOP has dragged itself.
There is attractive talent coming from Republican statehouses. Consider former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander, or William Weld, who won re-election easily from the same Massachusetts electorate that also was recycling Ted Kennedy one more time.
Republicans, however, are suffering their own version of the problem that bedeviled Democrats for several election cycles, when the party was in the thrall of its most outre sorts.
Candidates who first had to pass muster with feminist hard cases and arms-freezers had a hard time then pitching Jane and Joe Workaday.
Now, just when the prospect of Republican dominance is tantalizingly alight, the GOP finds its nominating process, too, in the grip of the party's loopier elements.
The Christian soldiers of the Robertson right were unable to march Oliver North into the Senate - see? there IS a God - but they came frighteningly close, considering that just about as many Republican regulars as Democrats denounced the possibility.
That loss aside, the religious right is a large and growing part of the GOP. It controls several state party organizations. It reluctantly indulges moderate Republican incumbents, but would-be nominees have to take its demands into account.
The Republican Party that controls Congress for the next two years will be strikingly more conservative than the party that went along with George Bush or even the one that capered with Ronald Reagan.
Last Tuesday's electoral eruption notwithstanding, it is an open question whether that's the kind of Republican Party most Americans want picking their president. MEMO: Mr. Teepen is national correspondent of Cox Newspapers.
KEYWORDS: U.S. SENATE RACE CANDIDATE by CNB