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Al-Ahram Weekly 3 - 9 June 1999 Issue No. 432 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 3 - 9 June 1999 Issue No. 432
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Interview Travel Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Redefining the right
By James Zogby*
The American Republican Party (GOP) is working its way through more than just a presidential primary. The 10 announced candidates for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination are, in fact, engaged in a struggle to redefine their party.
As immovably dominant as the GOP may have appeared to be during the 12 years of Reagan and Bush, deep fissures have since opened up that have cost Republicans the last two presidential contests. And despite winning control of both the Congress and the Senate in 1994 -- or perhaps, as some have suggested, because of it -- the internal divisions that plague the party have refused to heal.
The fundamental divide within the GOP is between the economic wing and the social values wing. This split is also reflected, to a degree, in the differences in style and philosophy between the traditional business-oriented, pragmatic Republican governors, and the hard-line ideological conservatives who currently hold sway in the Congress.
It is ironic that the problem that so plagues today's GOP actually began with Ronald Reagan -- the charismatic leader whose 1980 and 1984 victories were thought to have launched an indefinite period of Republican rule. Reagan was an economic conservative and a Cold-War hawk, but he also embraced the social morality concerns of the Christian right wing. His message was such that not only Republicans, but also many alienated middle-class working families found comfort in it -- thus helping him to build the broad coalition that was to forge two national victories.
The Reagan sweep of 1980 was more than a political victory; it also helped to launch a social movement. During the eight years of Reagan's presidency, there was a veritable explosion of conservative groups all across the United States.
George Bush, who had been Reagan's vice-president, may have succeeded him as president in the election of 1988, but the social conservative movement did not view him as Reagan's heir. Bush had, in fact, run against Reagan in 1980, when he challenged both Reagan's economic policy and his strict social conservatism. Bush belonged to the more traditional, pragmatic, business-oriented wing of the GOP. While Republican Party leaders supported Bush in 1988, the social movement organised against him. It was during the 1988 primary campaign that the right-wing Christian fundamentalist Pat Robertson, who was also a candidate for the presidency, launched his crusade to build a Christian Coalition.
Bush was elected president, but Robertson used the momentum of his campaign to organise a movement that within a few years gained control of almost one-third of the GOP's grass roots structures.
Bush's reelection bid in 1992 was hurt by the challenge from these ideological conservatives. He lost, and the fragmentation of the Reagan coalition became a political reality. Bill Clinton's victory in 1992 was made possible both by the GOP's disarray and also by Clinton's studied attempt to redefine and rebuild the Democratic Party. Clinton recaptured the centre of the political spectrum for the Democrats, so that working- and middle-class voters once again came to believe that the party was concerned for their families and their futures.
In a low turnout congressional election in 1994, the hard-line conservatives of the Republican Party, who were by now strongly wedded to the Christian right, won control of Congress. This was a major victory. But it was a victory which, in the final analysis, only aggravated the fissures within the party and further blackened its image in the eyes of many voters.
The dominance of the social conservatives and the Christian Coalition in the GOP grass roots has created a situation where, in order to win the Republican presidential nomination, a candidate must so transform himself and his message that he cannot easily shift back to a more centrist platform in time to win the national election. What worked for Republicans in low-turn out congressional campaigns has never had any chance of producing a meaningful victory at the national level. This was Bob Dole's experience in 1996. And today, this is precisely the situation that at least some of the Republican contenders for the 2000 nomination want to avoid.
It is this struggle within the Republican Party, for both its message and its image, which provides the backdrop for the current contest. On the one side, there are those who claim to be the heirs of Reagan. For the most part, they are the more hard-line conservatives, who are competing for the support of the Christian fundamentalists: former Vice-President Dan Quayle, billionaire Steve Forbes, Gary Bauer and Pat Buchanan.
Forbes is an interesting example of what has happened to the GOP. In 1996 when Forbes ran his first campaign for president, he was strictly an economic conservative. He called for a flat tax and smaller government. The religious right criticised him then, because he refused to adhere to their moral agenda. The new Steve Forbes of 1999 combines his old economic programme with a newfound enthusiasm for the social ideology of the Christian right. While equally hard-line on social morality issues, Bauer and Buchanan are running as what can only be described as anti-free market, anti-free trade populists. They both oppose the North American Free Trade Agreement and US involvement in the World Trade Organisation. Their brand of economic nationalism and protectionism is firmly opposed by pro-business traditionalists within the GOP.
On the other hand, the current frontrunners in the Republican race, George W Bush and Elizabeth Dole, appear to be attempting to move the party to a more moderate, centrist view. Dole, for example, has avoided taking the hard-line positions on abortion and gun rights that were adopted by her husband in 1996. Bush has also sought to portray himself as a more moderate political leader, coining the term "compassionate conservatism" to define his approach to governing. What both Bush and Dole are attempting to avoid is the image of rigidity and mean-spiritedness that came to characterise Republicans after their 1994 congressional victory and the prolonged impeachment drama. This they may succeed in doing, at least for themselves. But whether or not they will be able to amass enough votes to win the Republican nomination still remains to be seen.
The grass roots strength of the religious right and the hard-line conservatives will be tested in the 2000 race. What is at stake is not only the nomination, but the direction the GOP will take in the next century.
* The writer is the President of the Washington-based Arab-American Institute.
