THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, August 9, 1996 TAG: 9608090478
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: 60 lines
The question was how long it would be before Bob Dole blew up and lost the election for president.
Not to worry, he passed Wednesday the severest test imaginable without losing his temper.
He asked for a grace note of tolerance in the GOP platform for those who disagree with the plank calling for a constitutional amendment to ban abortion rights.
That seemed reasonable. Republicans brag about their big tent with room for everybody.
The word ``tolerance'' was nonnegotiable, Dole said.
Conservatives on the Republican platform committee threw it right back in his teeth - rebuked their candidate-to-be in his race against Bill Clinton. That hurt Dole as much as if Clinton had delivered it.
Many among them are members of the Christian Coalition. How is it that among conservative-styled Christians - a breathtaking claim to stake when you consider how Christ expects us to live - some can be so fractious on occasion?
Note, if you will, that word ``some.'' I'm not blanketing the movement.
What has happened to bring about an absence of humility among so many politicians who present themselves as what my Georgia kin used to call ``the GREAT I-AM.''
Pundits refer to Dole's ``dark side'' when, angered, he blurts out something baleful. That's the ``bad'' Dole who gets the ``good'' Dole in trouble, they say.
It would have been pardonable for bad Dole to cut loose a thunderbolt at fresh-faced coalition leader Ralph Reed, the political doyen in the disarming guise of the smartest boy in the class.
Reed is quoted as saying that nearly two-thirds of the delegates are religious conservatives. Polls say that nearly six in 10 Republicans oppose abortions. What must concern Dole is that six in 10 independents say the decision should be left up to the woman and her doctor.
Polls Thursday showed that among women voters, Dole still suffers a gap so wide some pollsters call it a ``gulch.'' It was over those voters that the Dole Camp fretted.
A floor fight in the convention was averted when the abortion-rights faction was allowed to have inserts published in an appendix to the platform report.
Merits on both sides of the abortion issue make it deeply troubling and difficult to resolve, although the anti-abortion forces keep gaining.
Urging his brethren to move along to other issues, Virginia Gov. George F. Allen evoked a striking metaphor.
There is a diversity of views, he said, ``and we must get all the wings of the party flapping in the same direction toward the same goal.''
It presents the image of a mythic bird of many wings or a single crow beating its way upwind in a hurricane. MEMO: Beginning Saturday, Guy Friddell will file his column from San
Diego, where he will be part of The Virginian-Pilot team covering the
Republican National Convention. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
No ``bad Dole, good Dole'' conflict emerged on this stressful issue. by CNB