Bush is now trying to get Rollins fired. but killing the messenger won’t mute the message. The president’s party is running scared–and blaming Bush for its troubles. “He’s the George Steinbrenner of politics,” says a GOP consultant. “He just booted away the best franchise in the sport.” (Rollins, a key architect of Ronald Reagan’s ‘84 landslide, was hired under a four-year, million-dollar contract to bring a GOP majority to Congress. He helped seed the anti-incumbent fervor that threatens to overtake more Republicans than Democrats.) The GOP had hoped to make major gains this November; now it is hoping to stave off disaster. A loss of 10 GOP House seats this November (a real possibility) could make the Democratic Congress virtually veto-proof.
For the GOP faithful, June 26 1990, is a day that will live in infamy. That was when Bush broke his “read my lips” pledge and put taxes on the table in the budget talks. It was like giving up the party’s “crown jewel,” says GOP consultant Lyn Nofziger. “Once he walked away from that. he had no base.” The GOP was already reeling from the loss of anti-communism and anti-abortion as galvanizing issues. Without the tax issue, candidates everywhere were suddenly adrift. “If you ask people generally what does it mean to be a Republican today, I don’t know that there’s any answer,” says GOP consultant Douglas Bailey.
The GOP’s split over taxes has opened old wounds. In the ’60s, it was the conservative Barry Goldwater wing against the party’s Eastern establishment, personified by Nelson Rockefeller. Ronald Reagan came from the right, but by force of personality was able to paper over the party’s differences. Now both sides are conservative, and the split may be more stylistic than substantive. GOP analyst Jeffrey Bell uses the labels “populist” and “elitist” to describe the two camps. Until the tax fight blew his cover, Bush was successfully straddling the two constituencies. During his ‘88 presidential campaign, he juxtaposed Willie Horton commercials with talk of a kinder, gentler nation. As president, he reached out beyond the elitist wing to such hard-core conservatives as his chief of staff John Sununu. His veto last week of a civil-rights bill, while enraging moderates, did help placate the right. “Given what he’s done on the budget, he had to give one to the conservatives,” says Bell.
Bad advice? Savvier advice might have kept Bush from falling into the divide. Some GOP loyalists blame Sununu and OMB Director Richard Darman for misreading the political hieroglyphics. Bush also misses Lee Atwater, the GOP party chairman who has been away from the job since March with a brain tumor. “Lee has an exquisite sense of where both sides of the party are coming from,” says Bell. Atwater is credited with discovering Willie Horton, yet, after the election, he pushed to expand the party’s appeal to blacks. Atwater also devised the so-called big-tent strategy on abortion to help broaden the party’s base.
The inevitable political pendulum will help Bush–at least temporarily. “When the president goes back to 75 percent [approval rating], these same Republicans will be back in there kissing and sucking around,” says media adviser Roger Ailes. But without either a strong personality or a strong set of beliefs, Bush will continue to have difficulty holding his fractious party together. “We may be heading back to a Goldwater core of Republicans by the time this guy is finished dismantling the party,” grumbles a GOP strategist. Bush was supposed to consolidate the gains of the Reagan era. Instead, the party is in a familiar period of retrenchment.
