The Strange Bedfellows

Representative Sam Devine of Ohio was about to start home late one evening when the telephone rang. It was Jimmy Carter, seeking support for his veto of the public works bill. The call was a little grating to Republican Devine because the President had been making a virtual family project of unseating him in next month's elections. Carter and Rosalynn had both gone to Ohio to speak against Devine, and Miss Lillian was scheduled to campaign there too until she was diverted to attend the Pope's funeral. So Devine was noncommittal to Carter. "I let him know that it was not a consistent position to ask for my support when he was doing everything to get me out of Congress," Devine said later. Yet when the hour came, he voted to sustain the President's veto.

Devine is but one of a fluctuating group of Republican legislators to whom Carter owes his main successes in Congress. The importance of G.O.P. support is most obvious in foreign affairs. Led by Minority Leader Howard Baker, 16 Republican Senators helped provide the one-vote margin that ensured passage of the Panama Canal treaties. Republican Senators voted 26 to 11 to authorize the sale of F-15s to Saudi Arabia, whereas Democrats opposed it 33 to 28.

On the domestic front, Democratic opponents would by now have stripped the civil service reform bill of the Administration's key provisions were it not for the support of Republican Representatives Ed Derwinski and Tom Corcoran of Illinois and James Leach of Iowa. In the House Ways and Means Committee, Barber Conable of New York and other Republicans have defended the Administration's free-trade policies against the Democrats' more protectionist attitudes.

This support of White House programs has robbed the G.O.P. of many potential election issues, and the Republicans know it. But they feel boxed in. "It's a political problem," says Conable. "They're co-opting our positions all over."

Last week Carter gathered 30 Republican Congressmen for breakfast at the White House to praise their emphasis on fiscal restraint and control of the bureaucracy, "the two issues that led to my election." He thanked them for backing "the guts" of his legislative program--and conceded that he "could not have prevailed without Republican support." The breakfast turned out to be more than a gesture of appreciation. The tributes had hardly ended before Carter was lobbying the G.O.P. Congressmen for support of his energy program, which comes up for a House vote this week.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.