Bush Faces Tough Choices in Taking a Stand on Abortion

He has toured the inner city to shine a light on the poor. He has called for arms reduction to create a less militarized world, and visited Lake Tahoe to show his commitment to conservation.

But for all the success George W. Bush has had straddling the center, there is one place he ventures at his political peril: challenging the Republican Party’s unwavering stand against abortion.

The issue has been dormant this spring, to Bush’s great benefit. But sometime in the heat of summer, the presumed Republican presidential nominee could rekindle the abortion fight when he reveals his pick for vice president.

If the Texas governor chooses a running mate who supports abortion rights, he would dramatically break from the party’s social conservatives and indelibly stamp himself a different, more tolerant sort of Republican. At the same time, he would risk an enormous backlash--a mutiny, even--within the GOP, which up to now has been unified to a degree unseen in years.

Candidate Has Been Vague on Subject

To many anti-abortion activists, the pick of an abortion-rights running mate would be akin to treason--and cause to either switch allegiance to the Reform Party’s Pat Buchanan, an unbending abortion foe, or simply stay home in November.

“The real question is: Does Bush really want a fight?” said G. Terry Madonna, a political scientist at Millersville University in Pennsylvania, whose governor, Thomas J. Ridge, is high on Bush’s list of prospective partners.

“If he decides he can show that he’s a centrist and draw more voters into the Republican orbit, then he can take the risk,” Madonna said. “If he wants to play it safe, he’ll pick a pro-life senator from a fairly decent-size state and be done with it.”

Bush, who opposes abortion, has been purposely vague about his deliberations. Along with Ridge, two other governors who support abortion rights, New York’s George Pataki and New Jersey’s Christine Todd Whitman, have been mentioned as possible Bush running mates.

“This is a campaign that’s going to have people who don’t necessarily agree on the abortion issue, and I welcome them,” Bush said in a recent interview.

Issue Is Freighted With Symbolic Import

Bridging that gap, however, may be tougher than Bush lets on. “He needs to find the fracture line,” said Stuart Rothenberg, an independent elections analyst, “between those who walk [away] and those who just swallow hard.”

In truth, relatively few voters select a candidate based on their abortion stand alone. But the issue is freighted with great symbolic import. Further, any dissension will be magnified at this summer’s Philadelphia convention, where Bush and his running mate will be formally installed on the GOP ticket. A battle over abortion is the last thing Bush wants.

“An image of division would interfere with the whole goal of a convention these days, which is to put on a media event that shows unity and allows the candidate to polish his image,” said Emory University’s Alan Abramowitz, an expert on abortion politics.

Conflict over abortion is hardly unique to Republicans. The dwindling number of anti-abortion Democrats has come to be increasingly isolated within their own party. But the rift in the GOP has been far more consequential, as the party perpetually seeks to balance the conflicting views of two large and disparate constituencies.

“The Republican Party includes religious types who care deeply about this issue on one side, and upper-middle-class yuppies, business and suburban types who care quite a lot the other way,” said William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard. “It’s still a kind of litmus test of where you are on a broader set of cultural issues.”

A Matter of Party Identification

Most Americans support legalized abortion, albeit with certain restrictions. In political terms, however, the issue has become less about abortion and more about attitude; in a word, it comes down to tolerance or, more precisely, the Republican Party’s image of intolerance.

“To a large extent the issue has been incorporated into party identification,” said Abramowitz, who suggested the GOP’s increasingly “hard-core” anti-abortion stance has cost the party support among moderates and independents, the swing voters who usually decide presidential elections.

Mindful of that strident image--and the political price--Bush has sought to recast the Republican Party by promoting his smooth-edged style of “compassionate” conservatism. He has reached out to gays and minorities, taken up traditionally Democratic issues like education and, not least, soft-pedaled his views on abortion.

Bush opposes abortion, except in cases of rape or incest or to save the life of the mother. At the same time, however, he has stated that “America is not ready” for a constitutional ban on the procedure, as sought in the Republican Party platform. Bush’s position has been defended by the Rev. Pat Robertson, among other leading abortion foes, giving the nominee-to-be political license to downplay the issue.

Now activists on the other side are stepping forward and calling on Bush to go further still by choosing a running mate who explicitly supports abortion rights.

“If Bush wants to truly show himself to be a unifier, how do you do that by picking a duplicate of yourself?” asked Ann Stone, national head of the group Republicans for Choice, which for years has tried unsuccessfully to budge the party from its anti-abortion doctrine. “Picking a pro-choice running mate really does allow him to demonstrate he’s interested in bringing people together.”

Failing that, she went on, “Our people will have no problem voting for [Democratic Vice President Al] Gore.”

Stance Could Alienate Republicans

But threats like that aside, Bush will have to consider whether he can afford to alienate such an important part of the Republican Party base. A New York Times-CBS News poll taken last month shows the risk; while 13% of Democrats and independents said they would be more likely to support the Texas governor if he pairs with an abortion-rights running mate, 30% of Republicans said they would be less likely to do so.

“If he did that, he’d be depriving millions of pro-life voters a chance to vote for him against Al Gore,” said Colleen Parro, director of the Republican National Coalition for Life. For decades Republican candidates have opposed legalized abortion. In 1972, GOP operatives portrayed Democratic nominee George S. McGovern as the candidate of “acid, amnesty and abortion,” shorthand used to devastating effect.

Over time, with the ascendancy of the religious right, the Republican stance on abortion grew increasingly hard-line. The evolution is apparent in the GOP platform, a statement of party principles adopted every four years.

GOP Unwavering in Opposing Abortion

In 1976, following the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, and again in 1980, the GOP platform opposed abortion but recognized differing views among Republicans. Since 1984, however, that conciliatory language has been stripped from the platform, which calls for a constitutional amendment outlawing abortion without exception.

Efforts by party centrists to remove the anti-abortion plank, or at least soften the platform language, have repeatedly failed in the face of strenuous opposition from social conservatives. Bush, too, opposes changing the platform, even though it conflicts with his personal views.

For that reason, many political observers would be surprised if Bush’s hug-the-center strategy extends as far as picking an abortion-rights running mate.

“It might make sense under certain circumstances, if he wanted to shake up the dynamic of the race,” said election analyst Rothenberg. “But as long as things remain the way they are, why take that risk now?”

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Politics of Abortion

Three governors mentioned as possible running mates for George W. Bush support abortion rights. But since the mid-1980s, the GOP has officially opposed abortion.

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“The unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We therefore reaffirm our support for a human life amendment to the Constitution . . .”

--From Republican Party platforms, 1984-1996

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Times columnist George Skelton contributed to this story.

For Mark Barabak’s audio analysis of the presidential campaign, please go to the Times’ Web site:

http://161.35.110.226/barabak