Tacking Further to the Right

By Laurence I. Barrett/Washington

It is an ancient rule for politicians. When far behind, rattle the chessboard and hope the pieces come down in a more promising alignment. New York Congressman Jack Kemp, struggling to reach the top rank of Republican presidential candidates, tried that gambit last week in Washington. Speaking before the 14th annual Conservative Political Action Conference, Kemp demanded that Secretary of State George Shultz resign. Said Kemp: "The Shultz doctrine is not the same thing as the Reagan doctrine."

The audience of 500 applauded wildly. Most of these activists backed Ronald Reagan as far back as 1976, when he nearly wrested the party's nomination from Gerald Ford. Even today, as Reagan battles his worst political crisis, CPAC's confidence in its hero remains high. Most of the participants consider Iranscam a murky irrelevancy, a distraction from their agenda of a still stronger defense, a reduced government, a return to the "moral values" of yesteryear. When Reagan told the group he was no lame duck but was "saving his best stuff for the last act," some listeners shouted, "Four more years! Four more years!"

Yet coalition members must find a new hero, and Kemp auditioned for the role by delivering an anti-Communist scorcher instead of his usual abstruse speech about free-market economics. At a time when some Republicans are distancing themselves from Reagan's foreign policy, Kemp embraced it with renewed fervor and blamed any mistakes on Shultz. He accused the Secretary of State of neglecting "freedom fighters" in Afghanistan and Nicaragua and of waffling on the Strategic Defense Initiative.

Properly motivated, the factions at last week's conference can influence the narrow world of nomination politics. Vice President George Bush courted the CPAC crowd for years and, despite his patrician style, made some friends. This year, sensing a stronger ideological mood, Bush skipped the conference, as did Howard Baker. Senator Robert Dole, Evangelist Pat Robertson and a few lesser candidates, however, welcomed the chance to chat up the conservatives.

Kemp's backers sought to dominate the meeting by taking a page from Reagan's 1976 playbook. After he lost the New Hampshire primary, Reagan attacked Henry Kissinger's detente policy and, by implication, Ford's anti-Communist credentials. Reagan's candidacy caught fire almost immediately, and he came close to winning the nomination.

Last week, however, other candidates were more restrained than Kemp. Robertson's speech emphasized domestic social issues. When asked about Shultz, he said, "It's unwise to spend our time fighting about personalities." Dole talked tough on foreign policy, but he said he was not going to tell the President whom to keep in his Cabinet.

Kemp's speech apparently worked: in a straw poll of 287 delegates, Kemp won 68% of the votes, in contrast to 5% for Dole and 4% each for Bush and Robertson. However, a larger poll taken this month of conservative activists around the country showed Bush marginally ahead, with Kemp and Dole virtually tied for second.

These figures, as well as surveys in the early primary states, show that Kemp still has not united the right wing behind him. As he colors himself in vivid hues of war paint, he also risks scaring offmoderate Republicans and independents. But having made so little progress as the advocate of supply- side economics and a return to the gold standard, Kemp does not have much to lose by changing the subject.