NEW IPO Logo - by Charles Larry Home Search Browse About IPO Staff Links



By PAUL M. GREEN


The GOP in New Orleans: keeping the hard right in line



Part melodrama and part hardball politics, the Republican national convention held in August was surprisingly exciting as well as politically informative. The Republicans gathered in New Orleans witnessed the emergence of George Bush as their party's leader; they also saw some of his top political aides blunder through the vice presidential selection process. The surprise nominee, Sen. Dan Quayle of Indiana, turned into a fiasco. The choice may or may not have long-range electoral overtones for the ticket, but in the short lifespan of the convention it was a mess. For weeks afterwards, the American people, Democrats and Republicans, were getting their fill of "Quayle under glass."

ii881017-3.jpg
Illinois Secy. of State Jim Edgar, Lt. Gov. George H. Ryan and Gov. James R. Thompson at the Republican convention in New Orleans.

Far more interesting than the Quayle affair are the following questions stemming from the convention:

  • What is the likely philosophical and political future direction of the national GOP?
  • How does Illinois fit into this nationwide Republican philosophical milieu?
  • Why did native Chicagoans attending this convention feel so much at home in the Big Easy of New Orleans?

The 1988 GOP convention looked like a huge corporate board of directors meeting. Almost all the delegates were white, three-fourths held management or professional positions and seven out of 10 were college graduates. As they were in Dallas at the 1984 convention, Republicans in New Orelans were confident of victory. Perhaps the fact that they believe Bush will win comfortably if not decisively in 1988 indicates how well they see their party's program and record matching the mood of a vast part of the American electorate. One downstate Illinois delegate put it like this: "Winning with a guy like Bush should show the Democrats that Reagan's personality was overrated as a factor in the last two wins. . . . They [the Democrats] will lose again because they are too damn liberal."

The "L" word (liberal) in New Orleans was a pejorative term reserved solely for Democrats. In fact, the 1988 GOP party has put the milder word "moderate" on the endangered species list since it's used only to describe a few remaining nonconservatives inside the mainstream of the party. The political creative tension in New Orleans was over how far to the right the Republicans can run and still win.

The split inside the Reagan administration between the conservative ideologues and the conservative pragmatists has almost reached the political arena. In New Orleans the ideologues or "hard right" were led by Rev. Pat Robertson people who, though clearly outnumbered by the pragmatist forces of Reagan, Bush and Kansas Sen. Robert Dole, nevertheless made their presence known. These individuals, many of whom are fundamentalists, have few disagreements with the pragmatists over foreign policy (one reason why Bush will push this area hard in the campaign) but differ greatly on the need for decisive movement on such domestic issues as abolishing abortion, allowing school prayer and preventing at all costs the passage of an equal rights amendment.

The hard-right Republicans support their policy positions with an amazing fervor and ferocity. For example, on Tuesday night of the convention New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean gave the party's


October 1988 | Illinois Issues | 17


keynote address. Kean does not toe the total hard-right anti-abortion line (he is against abortion except in cases of rape, incest or where the life of the mother is threatened). As the New Jersey governor spoke, 15 to 25 young men stood up in the Super Dome balcony and began shouting and waving placards. Their chants ranged from "baby killer" to "abortion is murder" and ended with the final battle cry, "Get the murderers out of the party."

One could dismiss these young, glazed-eyed zealots shouting their lungs out as extremists, but not everyone did. One Robertson follower in the Michigan delegation (seated behind Illinois') tapped me on my shoulder and said, "Those protesters belong to the Young Americans for Freedom. Aren't they wonderful."

If Bush loses in November, the GOP political establishment would have to deal with fundamentalist and hard-right conservatives who would demand an opening up of the party's nominating process and changes in the delegation selection rules for 1988. The fight would not only be between two conservative points of view but also between party regulars and party outsiders. In short, the political nightmare that has haunted the Democrats since 1968 might shift over to the Republicans. This time it would be a revolt of the right instead of the left. It's not hard to imagine some Robertson backers suggesting in 1989 that the Republican national committee set up a study commission to look for ways to reform the entire GOP national convention and presidential nominating system. The Democratic response would be simply, "Misery loves company."

The future direction of Republican politics in Illinois was on the mind of Secy. of State Jim Edgar in New Orleans. In a state that traditionally has had downstate and downstaters play a critical role in GOP party maneuverings and electoral strategy, Edgar remains the only major statewide Republican player whose Illinois roots lie outside metropolitan Chicago — if you stretch the technical metropolitan area definition to include Kankakee, home of Lt. Gov. George Ryan.

In New Orleans Edgar said in an interview over lunch that he sees a Bush victory in 1988 and that he believes Illinois Republicans will remain in the mainstream of pragmatic conservative politics. "Unlike other states," Edgar argues, "ideologues have not been a force in Illinois Republican politics." Still basking in his overwhelming 1986 reelection victory, Edgar is — in political street talk — "looking to move up." The only slots that fit that definition for him are governor and U.S. senator.

Edgar's 1990 hopes depend greatly on the plans of other politicians (most notably Gov. James R. Thompson), but whatever Edgar's political future may hold, he claims he will work tirelessly "to keep my party in the philosophical center." In Republican terminology that means pragmatic conservatism. He believes that Reagan during his eight years as president moved from being a philosophical outsider to become a political insider. Edgar believes that the Reagan presidency shows how the demands of governing mandate compromise and understanding of other interests. In crass political terms, Edgar believes that an approach which is pragmatically conservative and not hard-right ideologue will continue to attract Chicago ethnics to the Republican party. And he sees this development as having the potential for turning the Republicans into the dominant political party of Illinois.

The future Republican political picture that Edgar paints is not as rosy as he suggests, and disagreements over policy and approach for the national party in New Orleans illustrated some real and potential blotches on the Illinois GOP canvas. Despite the fact that the last Democratic presidential candidate to carry Illinois was Lyndon Johnson in 1964 and the last Democratic gubernatorial winner was Dan Walker in 1972, the Republicans are a minority party in Illinois. Both U.S. senators are Democrats, both chambers of the General Assembly have Democratic majorities, and one-half of the state's constitutional officers are Democrats. Clearly, the popularity of President Reagan, Gov. Thompson and Secy. of State Edgar has not been transferable to the rest of the Republican party in Illinois.

Hard-right Republicans in Illinois have never felt comfortable with the party's pragmatic leadership. Both Thompson and Edgar are more feared than loved by the ultraconservatives within the GOP. Unorganized, these individuals have seldom been able to demonstrate their displeasure, although many of them in the 1986 GOP Senate primary supported former state Rep. Judy Koehler's successful campaign against George Ranney, the candidate backed by Thompson and Edgar.

Internal Republican philosophical differences which have been publicized in other states have often been ignored in Illinois because they are overshadowed by the racial schisms and suicidal intrigues of Illinois Democrats. A Bush loss in November could open the Illinois GOP philosophical split for all to see. A Bush loss would unleash the hard right in Illinois to push their own candidates in the 1990 GOP primary for all statewide offices, especially if Thompson is not running for a fifth term. A Bush loss would energize Robertson-minded Republicans around the state and hard-right Republicans in the suburban collar counties to push an uncompromising social agenda despite opposition from pragmatic conservatives, especially those in the suburban northern suburbs along the lake.

The GOP hard right in Illinois has been kept in line for almost a decade because it feared another Democratic president like Jimmy Carter or the possibility of an Adlai E. Stevenson III governorship. To be sure, many hard-right conservatives personally admire Reagan (far more than Thompson), but in the end the president did not push their domestic issues. Now it's up to Bush to win Illinois and the presidency.

A final note from New Orleans. If there were an American sister city program, Chicago and New Orleans would be a perfect match. Most native Windy City residents feel right at home in the Big Easy. Bourbon Street is like a "Frenchified" and glorified Old South State Street; Canal Street in New Orleans looks like Chicago's modern day State Street, a once proud avenue seeking commercial redemption; and the ethnically diverse and colorful politics of New Orleans oozes with the kind of clout that would bring knowing smiles from Bathhouse to Fast Eddy.□

Paul M. Green is director of the Institute for Public Policy and Administration at Governors State University.


October 1988 | Illinois Issues | 18



|Home| |Search| |Back to Periodicals Available| |Table of Contents| |Back to Illinois Issues 1988|
Illinois Periodicals Online (IPO) is a digital imaging project at the Northern Illinois University Libraries funded by the Illinois State Library