Republican revolution begins to eat its own

0 Comments | Insight on the News, March 25, 1996 | by Michael Rust, | Jamie Dettmer

Much of this nomenklatura is fundamentally uncomfortable with the religious right, says the renegade Lind, but years of rhetoric have trapped them. "They've been attacking their natural allies--moderate Republicans -- for the past decade as a bunch of squishes and socialists and statists," he tells Insight. "Of course, they're all so shameless, they could probably go crawling back."

Buchanan's campaign believes that it, rather than the conservative establishment, is best able to restore the former coalition. "Pat will bring home the Reagan Democrats, the Perot people will be activated and, of course, the Christian conservatives and the traditional conservatives will also be energized," Bay Buchanan says. This gathering of the alienated will "have somebody who truly represents them, who can really beat Bill Clinton. I think you'll see that movement come very, very quickly after September."

Buchanan plans to appeal to the proletariat. His sister says they are "enthusiastically waiting to see if somebody who really truly represents them and their issues and concerns could be elected, and I don't think they're going to care what party he's from. Lind thinks the Buchananites could make inroads in the union vote, in spite of new AFL-CIO President John Sweeney's fervent support of Clinton. "I don't understand how any labor guy can be in favor of mass immigration," he says.

But the question remains whether conservatives, who have become rhetorically committed to bashing the federal government, will be able to draw in those voters for whom economic security is the principal issue. While Republican attacks on big government will appeal to this group, laissez-faire orthodoxy might backfire as a kind of corporate elitism.

All of this volatility and revolutionary rhetoric makes the current disunity an unsettling augur for GOP prospects. "Whoever the presidential nominee is, we have to run as a team and we win together as a team or we are defeated as a team," says GOPAC's Roff. "Because this has got to be about visions, not about personalities."