Political consultant Arthur Finkelstein theorized some years ago that the Republican Party was, in fact, made up of three separate and distinct parties with but one issue, anti-communism, holding them and thus the GOP together.

Those three parties were social conservatives as represented by Jesse Helms, economic conservatives as represented by Jack Kemp, and foreign policy-national defense conservatives as represented by Jeanne Kirkpatrick.

Each of those three factions could find differences with one or two of the others (and often did) but it was compelling opposition to oligarchic collectivism that held the party together and made it, for most of the 1970s and all of the 1980s, the political majority in America.

With the collapse of Soviet communism – some say, due to Ronald Reagan’s staunch policies – came the irony of the American voter in 1992 not having to consider for the first time in more than 40 years a presidential candidate’s ability to stand up to communist aggression, which played to Bill Clinton’s advantage and to George Bush’s detriment.

Many in the GOP remain firmly convinced that George Bush’s broken tax pledge and appearing to not care about the American economy led to his defeat. But it was also the collapse of communism that contributed to his loss in 1992.

The party today remains approximately the same. But due to the deterioration of the foreign policy wing of the GOP, the social conservatives, though not larger, seem more influential. This was witnessed by the 1992 Houston convention where the Bush campaign actually had a good foreign policy story to sell (to wit: Desert Storm) and a good economic story to tell but did not do so. The media and thus, the American people, came to believe that social issues were all the GOP was about.

Of compelling interest to the GOP today should be the effort by Bill Clinton and the Democratic Party to steal the crime issue, which, for Republicans, could become the new “anti-communism” and therefore the new glue to hold together the party, including the growing libertarian (read anti-big government) faction within the party.

Historically, crime has been a GOP issue. Democrats were seen in their alliance with the American Civil Liberties Union, their opposition to the death penalty, the defense of Vietnam protesters and the like, as being “soft on crime.” After all, Richard Nixon ran on “law and order” in 1968 and Ronald Reagan talked about freedom consistent with “law and order.”

The danger for Republicans is that Mr. Clinton is making progress on this issue. Call it cheap symbolism, but his anti-crime rhetoric is hitting home with people weary of crime and all its symptoms.

However, the GOP can bring this issue back home if it rejects the rhetoric of Sarah Brady, Mr. Clinton and others and take a page out of the book of George Allen’s campaign for governor of Virginia.

John McLaughlin, Mr. Allen’s campaign pollster, saw early last year in his polling that Mary Sue Terry, the Democratic nominee for governor and the sitting attorney general, would win the Virginia election unless that group of voters most concerned with crime could be convinced that the issue was not gun control but crime control

The research also indicated that voters saw her version of gun control, a waiting period, as ineffective, and Miss Terry’s strident attacks on the National Rifle Association as a gimmick. Further, they thought a five-day waiting period wouldn’t do anything to stop crime, but they did believe that having more cops on the street, tough sentencing and reducing recidivism were real solutions. They also expressed a high degree of support for Virginia’s existing Instant Check Program.

Consequently, Mr. Allen hammered away at the failure of the criminal justice system, the frightening statistics about repeat offenders. And by Election Day, that group of voters were firmly in Mr. Allen’s camp, thus delivering the election to the GOP.

The Republican National Committee just held its winter meeting here and it should remember that no GOP candidate ever lost on the gun control issue despite the handwringing by the Washington intelligentsia.

Too many in the GOP offer too much “me tooism” as it is. So if they want to once again become the political majority in America and thus the governing majority, they ought to reject Mr. Clinton’s and the Democrats’ solution to crime and come up with their own. They must devise a set of ideas and goals that the American people will support. Anti-crime can be the new anti-communism for the Republican Party. But it requires the same will as the party had in opposing communism.

Craig Shirley is president of a Washington public relations and political consulting firm.

LOAD-DATE: February 20, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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