Where Are the Wingers?

By Laurence I. Barrett/Washington

One could ransack the honor roll for local heroes of the New Right's past battles against the Republican mainstream and find no warriors more stalwart than Florida's Tommy Thomas and Iowa's Chuck Grassley. Thomas, a tough-talking Chevrolet dealer from Panama City, likes to boast that he is the only politician who has headed his state's Reagan campaign in three elections. "If everyone were as right-wing as I am," he jokes, "the world would be a screwed-up place." Grassley's pedigree is equally pure: he defeated the favorite of Iowa's moderate G.O.P. establishment in a 1980 primary on his way to becoming a star of the Senate's radical-right class of '80. All the early scenarios of the 1988 presidential contest predicted that crusaders like Thomas and Grassley would be in the trenches fighting off a comeback by the party's squishy centrists.

Wrong. Thomas is proud to be co-chairman of George Bush's Southern command, and Grassley has lent his energy and organization to Bob Dole's Iowa campaign. Their candidate preferences, which are surprisingly typical, illustrate why it is a mistake to assume that the 1988 Republican race will re-enact the ideological blood feuds of 1976 and 1980.

Many of the G.O.P. "wingers" who helped launch the Reagan Revolution have stopped searching for a candidate of ideological purity and have gravitated quite comfortably to Bush or Dole. While discontented remnants continue to search for an unsullied ideological paragon with some electoral electricity, the real contest so far is taking place at the party's center. It is a battle devoid of issues, since the philosophical differences between Bush, the heir apparent, and Dole, his only strong challenger, are as scarce as heavy-metal bands at Republican rallies.

Moderation was indeed the message and pragmatism the policy last week as Bush became the first sitting Vice President since 1968 to seek a promotion. "I'm a practical man," he told 2,000 supporters in Houston. "I like what's real. I'm not much for the airy and the abstract. I like what works." What seems to work for Bush is Reaganism in a minor key: his announcement speech mentioned support for contras and opposition to higher taxes but omitted any reference to Star Wars, Robert Bork and such hot-utton social issues as abortion and school prayer. Instead, he stressed the need for racial harmony and concern for the environment. His call for "prosperity with a purpose," although fuzzy, was a catchy slogan with Kennedyesque overtones.

Dole, who has been emphasizing the need for Republicans to be more sensitive to minorities and the poor, signaled last week that he would not be outflanked in the race for the Republican center. He snared a leading Republican moderate as general chairman: Secretary of Labor Bill Brock. Relentlessly nonideological, the former Tennessee Senator and Republican national chairman is a deft tactician who can shore up Dole's fractious organization. Dole is banking heavily on the argument that he is more electable than Bush because he can better attract independents and disaffected Democrats.

Why are Bush and Dole so seemingly unworried about retribution from the right? Partly because the conservative faithful lack a totem with the stature of Barry Goldwater in 1964 or Reagan in 1980. Jack Kemp has been grooming himself for the role of high priest of the Reaganite church, but he has been unable to rise above the status of altar boy. Kemp revealed last week that he has borrowed against his federal matching funds (due in January) for the second time, a telling indication of his failure to rally the true believers. And in Iowa, Kemp is in danger of being demoted to fourth place by the energized Evangelicals supporting Pat Robertson.

But Robertson -- despite scoring victories in the early skirmishing and raising $11 million, almost as much as Bush -- remains circumscribed by his career as a televangelist. The limits of his appeal were apparent last Friday, when he stunned the G.O.P. Western Conference in Seattle by referring to Bush as a "whiny loser" and later attacked Reagan for negotiating with the Soviet Union. Applause for such remarks was faint and scattered.

Some Republican wingers have gravitated to Pete du Pont, who has positioned himself to the right of Kemp with his advocacy of drug testing in the schools and free-market nostrums like eliminating farm subsidies. But the former Delaware Governor remains too patrician for most conservatives and too conservative for most patricians.

The search for a standard-bearer has lately produced a new faint rumbling on the right: Viva Kirkpatrick! In Managua last week, that cry greeted the only American to have a contra brigade named after her. When Jeane Kirkpatrick arrived to address a reception on the grounds of the U.S. embassy, she was met by a wildly enthusiastic crowd of more than 1,000, many waving small U.S. flags. "It was almost as if she were running for office," said one who attended. "Like the presidency of Nicaragua."

A savvy speculation, but his geography was off. A few days later, former New Hampshire Governor Meldrim Thomson announced that he was starting up a presidential exploratory committee on behalf of Kirkpatrick. While not committing herself, she says, "I've talked to a great many people about the campaign, including Governor Thomson, and a great many people have offered help."

With her high name recognition and intellectual stature, Kirkpatrick might do well as a symbolic candidate among neoconservatives and catapult into strong contention for the vice-presidential nomination. But she probably lacks the political machinery and electoral record (though not the ego) to organize a credible quest for delegates.

Republican wingers are also suffering from a dearth of fresh issues compelling enough to mobilize a right-wing populist crusade. The causes that once launched fervent insurgencies do not seem as pressing as they did during the out-of-power 1970s. "The reason there is little thunder from the right," says Burton Pines, vice president of the Heritage Foundation, "is that the atmospheric conditions have to be right for thunder." Conservative indignation is difficult to sustain, even though Reagan has failed to follow through with his social agenda and is about to sign an arms deal with the Soviet Union. Explains Lance Tarrance, a conservative pollster working for Kemp: "Once outlanders get their man in, they tend not to behave like outlanders."

In presidential politics, it is always dangerous to predict the end of ideology. True believers can have a disproportionate influence in a process dominated by caucuses and low-turnout primaries. To protect themselves against a revival of the wingers, both Bush and Dole have been dutifully massaging right-wing groups. Neither candidate, after all, is anything like a Republican liberal of the old Nelson Rockefeller school. The whole party has moved rightward with Reagan; indeed, the conservatives' success in sparking such a shift is one cause of their waning influence.

For the moment, Bush is the beneficiary of the royalist strain in the Republican Party that prizes orderly succession. In the end, it is his fate more than anything else that will dictate the ideological tenor of the Republican race. "If Bush wins Iowa, the race will likely be over within four weeks," predicts Tarrance, echoing the views of other conservatives. That is why Dole represents something of a stalking horse for the G.O.P. long shots. Robertson, Kemp and du Pont are all gambling that Dole will wound Bush in the early going and thus open the field to their far more ideological appeals. If that happens, the Republicans may yet undergo a war of ideas and a battle for the philosophical soul of their party, rather than just a contest over resumes.