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Monday, 8/25/97 GOP houses a host of narrow interests REPUBLICANS: Party's lack of diversity becomes visible when its platform, causes are categorized

By Darrin Hurwitz MacLane Key's blissful commentary (Big trouble in a little tent, January 18, 1997) about a healthy, diverse Republican Party is chock-full of wishful thinking and gross inaccuracy. It's easy to wonder whether Key's Republican Party is the same one that I and most other Americans have observed become increasingly divisive, extreme, and narrowly-based in recent years. At first glance, the picture Key paints sounds neat and rosy. He asserts that the Republican Party is the home of vigorous, open-minded debates, in which a diverse group of Americans with differing sets of principles and priorities, can somehow all come together to further the interests of the Grand Old Party. Key backs up his argument by documenting a few of the broad groups that make up the Republican Party. There are the anti-crime advocates (i.e. those who demand harsher prison sentences but want to do away with that other response to crime - sensible gun control laws). There are the free-market environmentalists who believe that the best way to protect the environment is to turn one's head and simply hope that big business will treat the environment respectfully. And let's not forget the Reagan zealots, those mainstays of good ol' Republican nostalgia. Somehow, they conveniently ignore the four trillion dollar national debt incurred during his administration and the thousands of families who lost their monthly checks so that Reagan could add another nuclear warhead or B-2 bomber to our already over-flowing arsenal. The problem is that while Key has identified different groups in the Republican Party, they are not a particularly diverse bunch and they certainly hold nothing in the way of "broad appeal." At least not in today's America, where, remember, the average American is not a suburban white male earning six figures with a vacation home. Unfortunately, the Republican Party has responded to the splendid diversity of this nation by becoming increasingly exclusive and reactionary. As a result, it has become more and more out-of-touch with the everyday concerns of working and middle-class Americans. Rather than deal proactively with the wide range of social problems that this nation, and particularly its underrepresented groups, face, the GOP has undertaken two courses of action. Both are more comparable to a child's temper tantrum than reasoned, mature policy. The first action has been to blame the "liberals" and their policies for today's social problems. That's kind of like blaming the Band-Aid for the wound. But perhaps it makes sense. Isn't it easier to rationalize spending cuts and upper-class tax breaks when the poor and downtrodden of our society can be blamed for their own poverty and those who have tried to help them can be blamed for attempting to find a solution? Secondly, Republicans have attempted to play the blame game by utilizing the "race card" to drum up working and middle-class support. Gov. Wilson and the California GOP have played into legitimate concerns about crime and jobs by embracing emotional issues such as illegal immigration, affirmative action and bilingual education. These issues unwittingly raise fear and hostility by tapping into traditional reservations about a multicultural, diverse America. What the GOP strategists didn't consider was that by identifying itself with these issues, it might have picked up some votes in the short-run, but for the long-term it has perhaps fatally injured its reputation among minority voters. One case in point was the dramatic shift of Latinos, soon to be a majority of California residents, to the Democratic Party in 1996. Another was the extraordinary rise in this ethnic group's voter turnout. Ultimately, Key's "big tent" may be standing on quicksand. The Republican Party's course of action in many ways reflects the party's 1990s turn toward the right . This is evident by the increasing influence of Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition and the shift of the party's leadership to the traditionally more conservative South. The GOP's growing problem is that the majority of Americans do not support this harsher, more conservative agenda. Newt Gingrich's unpopularity and the demise of the last Congress' "Contract with America" is testament to the fact that perhaps Republicans misread opinion polls when they took over the reins of Congress in 1994. While Americans do want a smaller, more effective and less bureaucratic government, they also want to maintain a certain level of government support for impoverished families, college students and the elderly. And Americans also are keen enough to see through the propaganda of a party which argues for capital gains cuts for the rich to improve the economy but attempts to balance the federal budget on the backs of those who can least afford it. Those in the GOP who have come to recognize the disparity between the party's agenda and public opinion have been unable to stage an organized fight for the party's heart and soul. Pro-choice Republicans, who recognize that over two-thirds of Americans support abortion rights, have been unable to rewrite the party's platform to reflect this sentiment. Additionally, more progressive viewpoints on such issues as gay rights, environmental protection, education reform, and church-state separation are kept out of the party agenda by a vocal and powerful group of religious conservatives. The in-fighting which has taken place is anything but the "healthy debate" which Key believes it is. Good debate requires an open mind, a reasonable dose of skepticism, respect for other's opinions, and a willingness to change one's views. The rigidity of the religious right's views has allowed none of this to take place, and it is unlikely that much will change as long as it maintains its power within the party. What we are left with, then, is an ongoing series of confrontations between moderates and the right wing of the Republican Party. If the duel over Weld's appointment to the ambassadorship of Mexico is any indication, then it's clear that the right is winning. Remember that Senator Helms, who has so far successfully held up Weld's nomination, was a renowned segregationist who voted against the 1965 Civil Rights Act. In 1990 he ran a campaign advertisement showing a white hand crumpling up job papers after losing out to a black man. This is the same guy who rails on Weld's support for easing marijuana restrictions but is the torch-bearer of a drug business which kills half a million Americans a year - the tobacco industry. The fact that Helms can single-handedly hold a president's nomination in check and receive nothing but a few meager complaints from other Republicans shows where the real power lies in the GOP. Until moderates are able to regain enough control over the party's soul to restore a sense of social responsibility and tolerance to the party's agenda, Democrats should be thanking their lucky stars and counting their political fortunes. Previous Daily Bruin Story Big trouble in a little tent