ARTICLES

Big Tent Bazaar

LIBERAL COUP AT GOP CONVENTION FAILS

Pro-life Republicans survived an abortion-rights faction's revolt at the GOP convention in late February, securing the chairman and vice-chairman posts for the next two years.

The convention in Sacramento attracted seven presidential hopefuls, over a 1000 GOP delegates and a throng of print and television reporters eager to expose divisions in the party.

The convention's controversy derived from an interview John McGraw gave to the San Francisco Faith (a sister-paper of New Notes) in December. McGraw's forthright pro-life remarks enraged Republicans who support smashing the pro-life plank in the state platform. Nick Bavarro, a Modesto businessman, immediately challenged McGraw for the chairmanship and Brooks Firestone challenged Shawn Steel for vice chairman.

Bavarro expressed outrage at the thought of a prospective chairman placing concern for unborn children above money issues, "I'm stunned. Our leadership cannot be viewed as the party of the extreme, the party of one issue." Bavarro also implied that a believing Catholic is not fit to lead the California GOP, "We are electing a chairman, not a Pope." Multimillionaire winemaker Brooks Firestone, for his part, explained to the Los Angeles Times that he wanted to "restore fun, excitement, productivity and electability to the party.

Bavarro and Firestone quickly received the endorsement of the California Federation of Republican Women, the California Congress of Republicans and the California Republican League, in addition to the vocal support of Lynn Grefe from the Republican Pro-Choice Coalition who referred to insurgent pro-lifers as "termites."

The California press, in the meantime, stoked the fires of pro-abortion outrage with a spate of stories on the McGraw Faith interview. "Interview imperils party chief's chances," blared the San Francisco Chronicle. "State GOP chief's words on abortion spark uproar," headlined the San Francisco Examiner.

But the moderates' putsch at the convention never materialized. McGraw and Steel both finessed the abortion controversy, stressing the theme of unity throughout the convention. They also benefited from legwork done long before the Faith flap. A talented fundraiser, McGraw had the endorsements of 14 out of 15 Republican state senators and 29 of 32 GOP assembly members before the convention even began, in additon to the crucial support of the two highest-ranking Republicans in the state, Bill Jones and Chuck Quackenbush.

Nor could Bavarro and Firestone persuade grassroots conservatives to abandon McGraw and Steel. Many showed up upset with the forked-tongue Big Tent rhetoric of the moderates.They wore yellow labels, reading, "I'm a conservative. Is your Big Tent big enough for me?"

The national press largely neglected these GOP delegates, focusing instead on the complaints of disgruntled moderates, as if their desertion of the party represented the GOP's greatest threat. According to ABC political analyst Bill Kristol, who spoke to this reporter at the convention, a third party is possible by 2004, but it won't be composed of moderates. Rather, pro-lifers, exhausted with an "operationally pro-choice" Republican party, could form it, said Kristol.

"I'll abandon the Republican Party if it abandons unborn children and traditional morality," said one convention goer. "The Republican Party is on the edge of becoming just the party of plutocracy and moral evasion, and if it continues in this soulless direction, I will break."

While Senator John McCain, Lamar Alexander, and even Dan Quayle largely sidestepped the issues that keep such social conservatives in the Republican party, Alan Keyes, Gary Bauer, and Senator Bob Smith appealed to them.

Keyes delivered a nuanced and candid philosophical talk on the intrinsic connection between moral and economic conservatism and on the proper meaning of "unity." He emphasized that the party's support for smaller government, less regulation, greater financial freedom, and parent-run education only make sense if the American people possess the virtue and wisdom necessary to govern themselves.

"We would like to believe we are in great shape, but we are not really," said Keyes. "If we wake up in time, we will save the country. If not, we will lose everything we hold dear.... There are people in this room who think that all we should talk about [are] those things we agree on and leave out those things we don't.... [But] you can't come forward and say we trust the people and the [Democrats] trust the government and then turn your back on the question mark behind the character and capacity and judgment of these people.... What if it is true that by and large the people of this country are so depraved that parents won't meet their responsbilities to their children, won't care about their children's welfare...and will use and abuse them as objects of their convenience, as objects of their passion? What if that is true? Will you trust the people then? What if they won't care about their neighbors?"

"People say, the American people love Clinton in spite of his vices. That's not true. They love him because of his vices. They love Bill Clinton because he is the poster-boy of American moral depravity.... If that is the kind of people we have become, then every last policy the Republican party proposes is wrong because we cannot trust such a people.... If we lose the moral argument, we will lose every other argument.... When are we going to wake up and see this?... There can be no self-government without self-discipline."

Keyes stressed that Republican unity and national unity rests not upon a mutual agreement to overlook grave moral issues, but upon a mutual acknowledgment of the unfiying moral truth at the heart of America's founding documents, namely, that all men possess the right and the duty to live according to God's will. His will, not man's, is the only sure ground of unity.

"So we are divided now, are we, in our belief that every single human being has god-given rights that must be respected by every single human power? We are divided? No, we are united by that belief or we are united by no other." Keyes reminded Big Tent Republicans that the party's patron saint, Abraham Lincoln, risked a "bloody" civil war over the moral issue of slavery. How can they, therefore, flee from the moral issue of abortion on the pretext of protecting party unity? "There will be no ground for unity in this party and there will be no grounds for unity in America if you back away from the plank in this platform."

Gary Bauer hit upon similar themes. "Our party has spent all too much time worrying about polls and focus groups, trying to figure out what our position is going to be," he said. "The American people won't support a party that does this.... The party of Lincoln and Reagan shouldn't be walking around with its finger up in the air trying to figure out where the wind is blowing.... We ought to be willing to tell the American people what we believe without shame and embarrassment."

"26 years ago the Supreme Court did an unimaginable thing. It took a whole group of Americans and it said to them, 'You have no rights.' That decision has given us unbelievable horrors. It means that we wake up in the morning and we open up the newspaper and we read stories about babies being thrown in trash cans.... We are better than 1.5 million abortions a year. The party of Lincoln and Reagan must never abandon unborn children and if it does we will never get the White House back again."

Later at a press conference, Bauer returned to this point, saying that a patronizing approach to pro-lifers is a formula for "futility." The pro-lifers "who stuff the envelopes and ring the doorbells" will not long suffer a cynical Republican party.

As the convention neared to a close, Senator Bob Smith of New Hampshire spoke, making direct reference to the controversy. "John McGraw was right," he said. Abortion, not taxes, is the "central issue" facing America. Pro-lifers in the party should not be treated as "second-class citizens because we stand up for the [pro-life] plank in our party."

Smith left his audience with a rather sobering message. "The bad news is there might be a third party, the worse news, the Republicans might be the third party.... If we're not going to stand up for the life of unborn children, maybe the Republican party deserves to fall into the ash bin of history."

See sidebar San Diego Voices for statements by Mayor Susan Golding and pro-life State Senator Ray Haynes.