In a somber speech in Washington, Dole conceded to Bill Clinton with a soldier’s steel and a statesman’s grace. ““I wish him well and pledge my support,’’ he told a tearful crowd at the Renaissance Hotel. ““I’m still the most optimistic man in America.’’ It was a dramatic moment, but not unexpected. Republicans had long since decided that the Dole-Kemp ticket would lose. The battle to remake and lead the GOP has been underway for months. ““It’s going to be all-out war,’’ said GOP consultant Frank Luntz.
On the surface, Dole’s defeat wasn’t the kind of catastrophe that leads to strife or soul-searching. Keeping their distance from him, marshaling their own money and message, congressional Republicans managed to hold their own. They increased their margin in the Senate and held on to the House, though with a smaller majority. Newt Gingrich returns as speaker, and brings with him most of the famously obstreperous freshman class of 1994. The GOP now holds 32 of 50 governorships. The Dole campaign itself was easy to dismiss as a special case: a wretchedly run effort by an inarticulate candidate who faced an adroit incumbent. ““This was a personal loss for Dole, not a repudiation of the party,’’ said Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition.
But all is not right with the right, and Republicans know it. Dole was the last of a breed, an ““institutional’’ candidate with the seniority, money and endorsements to paper over–one last time–the deep divisions in the new party that had grown up around him. After him, the deluge: an uncivil war between two kinds of conservatives. For one, the paramount objective is to cut taxes. For the other, the overriding aim is curtailing sin.
With the cold war now long gone, conservatism still hasn’t found a new, unifying theme, says GOP polltaker John McLaughlin. ““It’s no accident that we’ve lost two presidential elections since the fall of the Berlin wall,’’ he says. ““Foreign policy was the one thing that united all parts of the base.’’ At home, Republicans must show that they are the party of compassion, argues commentator Arianna Huffington. ““We have to speak convincingly to the social and economic divisions in the country.''
Clinton has complicated the GOP task by shrewdly stealing the party’s message. ““We don’t have much to call our own,’’ says Lamar Alexander. Clinton could be the inadvertent architect of a GOP revival if he takes a left turn. But by retaining control of Congress the GOP probably ensured that the president would continue to steer a centrist course.
Next time, Republicans say, they must find a leader suited to the times. It won’t be easy. The potential nominees most likely to appeal to swing voters in a general election are the least likely to survive a nominating process largely controlled by Christian conservatives. Colin Powell, for example. He might have won a race against Clinton had he been the GOP nominee, according to exit polls on Election Day.
In what used to be considered a ““royalist’’ party, there is no line of succession. Jack Kemp, though still popular with the GOP rank and file, may have blown his chance to be front runner by bloviating his way through the debate with Al Gore. Newt Gingrich is still speaker, but remains nationally unpopular. Senate Leader Trent Lott is likely to become Washington’s most prominent Republican, but many of his GOP colleagues on the Hill think he’s too slick to win.
There is much maneuvering outside Washington. Quayle is serious, and even though Jay Leno may laugh at him, insiders–and GOP donors–don’t. An operation has cured the former vice president’s phlebitis. This fall he’s attended 90 events for 70 candidates in 30 states. His PAC dispensed $1.2 million. Quayle has moved his residence from Indianapolis to Phoenix, where he will teach at a management-training school. The weather’s better, the golf is better–and there happens to be a crucial GOP primary in Arizona. Meanwhile, from his magazine’s offices in Manhattan, Forbes is determined to make the case for radical tax cuts. Derided as a ““space alien’’ in the primaries, Forbes isn’t giving up. Since Labor Day he’s campaigned in 38 states, attending 280 events, conducting 500 interviews and talk-radio appearances and raising $1.5 million for GOP candidates.
The foes of the Christian right are determined to have their own candidate in 2000. They argue that the GOP can win only with a moderate, someone who seems tolerant of social diversity–including abortion rights. And they point to exit polls that showed the Clinton-Dole gender gap was the largest in history.
““We’re going to have to take on the religious nuts,’’ says GOP strategist Margaret Tutweiler. A favorite: Whitman, the New Jersey governor who’s both pro-choice and pro-tax cuts. She’s seeking re-election next year. If she wins, she’ll be considered a major contender for 2000.
While the moderates hunt for the ““acceptable,’’ the religious right yearns for the ““pure.’’ Gary Bauer of the Family Research Council says religious conservatives may now coalesce around a figure who has always been ““one of our own,’’ unlike Dole. Ralph Reed says that Bauer might be right. ““It might not be a bad idea to explicitly rally our people behind one candidate who fully shares our views,’’ he says. Like who? Reed mentions South Carolina Gov. David Beasley, an early member of the Christian Coalition. Bauer offers a more exotic name: James Dobson, head of Focus on the Family, the conservative religious empire based in Colorado Springs.
Then there is a celebrity cell of might-be candidates who think they can somehow rise above both factions. Powell is the most obvious; Elizabeth Dole is another. Author and former drug czar Bill Bennett is also scouting the terrain. Bennett, NEWSWEEK has learned, recently sounded out Ralph Reed about helping him if he decides to run. Reed politely declined, for now.
The GOP has yet to look beyond the World War II generation for a nominee. This time they’ll have to. Other possibilities: two Tennesseans, Alexander and Sen. Fred Thompson; Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, and big-state governors like Michigan’s John Engler and Wisconsin’s Tommy Thompson.
But the hottest ““new’’ name is an old one: George Bush. Not the former president, but his son the governor of Texas. He is popular with religious conservatives and country-club moderates alike, a happy synthesis his father never quite mastered. Bush the Younger did a little traveling out of state this year, but only at the direct request of the Dole campaign. ““We don’t want to raise any expectations,’’ said a close adviser to the governor. ““We’re concentrating on the next legislative session.’’ Bush is up for re-election in 1998. There’s plenty of time. Iowa will still be there when he’s ready.
With religious conservatives battling the country-clubbers and cultural warriors taking on supply-siders, life under the GOP tent is rarely dull. A look at the splits in the party, and the players who may fight it out for the Republican nomination in 2000:
