Voices Beneath the Harmony

Three prominent Republicans talk about the political future

Unlike the Democratic Convention, where the cheers were punctuated by occasional jeers, and struggles for the heart of the party were apparent on the podium and on the floor, the Republicans' conclave was a telegenic display of unity. But off-camera, the Republicans were more candid about the divergent currents that will determine the party's future. Presidential Pollster Richard Wirthlin, Kansas Senator Robert Dole and New York Congressman Jack Kemp were among the G.O.P. leaders and strategists who met individually with TIME's editors to discuss the changing Republican Party. Their main points:

Richard Wirthlin. For the first time in my memory, voters 24 years old and younger support Republicans and Reagan more strongly than any other age group except those over 65. We have an 18-point margin over Mondale among these young voters. And that is where long-term partisan change can happen. If we get a voter who is 19 or 20 years old to cast his first vote for Reagan, we know we have a very good chance of having that voter for ten presidential elections.

The vote itself is a very ephemeral thing. It is froth on the surface of a churning sea. To understand what is generating that froth you have to understand what people aspire to and what they value highly. I just completed a study on this subject and found that younger voters are very individualistic in their economic views but quite liberal in terms of their positions on social issues, such as the ERA and abortion. They tend to be more liberal than the Republican platform. So there is a certain tension there. If growth continues and the economy is no longer a major concern in people's lives, it is possible that social issues will play a more prominent role in a voter's decision. That could work against the President and the Republican Party. But I do not think this is highly likely. The pocketbook is going to be the dominant concern of Americans for a long time to come.

In 1982, when the economy was pretty rocky, it was interesting to us to learn that it was the fairness issue more than the economic issue that helped Democratic Congressmen win elections. I think that is even more true today. The Democrats are going to come at us very hard on the fairness issue. The perception of unfairness in the Reagan Administration is about where it was a year ago, except among older, retired voters, who are supporting the President more than they did earlier. We felt the recovery would soften the fairness issue somewhat. It did not.

Robert Dole. I do not see a big shift in the Republican Party. We are a conservative party. But I think we have sort of lost our way a little bit on fiscal policy, largely due to the recession, but partly due to the belief that the deficit would just take care of itself. Just continue to cut taxes and the deficit goes away. Now that may happen, but I do not see much evidence of it yet.

The fastest-growing program in Washington is not Medicare. It is not agriculture. It is not defense. It is interest on the debt. That interest this year is $110 billion. It is headed for $200 billion by the end of the decade. That is net interest. The total is more than double President Kennedy's budget in 1962 for the whole country.

We are supposed to be the tight-fisted party that wants to balance the budget. So we put a balanced-budget provision in the platform, but then we proceed to spend $75 billion to $100 billion in tax breaks. The same people who are talking about a flat tax to broaden the tax base and get rid of loopholes are loading up the platform with provisions that increase the [personal income tax] exemption from $1,000 to $2,000. That is big money--$15 billion just for that one little item.

[House members such as Kemp, Trent Lott and Newt Gingrich] controlled the platform but do not control anything in Congress. Unfortunately, they are a minority in the House. We have a little different view in the Senate because we are in the majority. We have to be totally responsible from time to time. Now, if you are in the minority, that is when you can put out a lot of newsletters and say "I'm for lower taxes" and "I'm not going to worry about spending or the deficit" and "We're going to bash Paul Volcker [chairman of the Federal Reserve] and get interest rates down."

Jack Kemp. The far right did not write this platform. They would like to take credit for it, but with all due respect to them, it was written by a group of young, activist-oriented Republicans who are not comfortable sitting on the sidelines. The platform is not a narrow, negative, nationalistic, Communist-bashing document. There are elements of conservatism associated with values we Republicans share about the family and Judeo-Christian ideals. But it is liberal with regard to trade and the inner city. I think the platform expresses a newness.

For all too long our party was trapped in the green-eyeshade, accounting-firm mentality that has turned off the cities and minorities to what we Republicans are all about. We became associated with a narrow fiscalist view of the world. Part of the change taking place today is that Walter Mondale is beginning to sound like the old conventional orthodox wing of the Republican Party, which made reducing deficits its single overriding goal. Now it is the Republican Party that is actually talking about jobs and growth and rebuilding a liberalized trade system that would be more encouraging to the world.

Today there is not more tolerance of the deficit as much as there is a recognition that all deficits are not created equal. New York City's deficit, predicated on spending, is different from a deficit resulting from a contraction of the economy. High utilization of plant capacity and high levels of employment can reduce such a deficit. This recovery is somewhat different from a typical Keynesian recovery because it is not consumption-led. Despite our critics, it is an investment-led recovery.

You must not judge the deficit only at the federal level. The total national, state and local deficit is about $100 billion to $110 billion. In a $3.8 trillion economy, that deficit is not as bad as the hysteria would have us assume. We should not panic. We should cut spending where possible. But a relentless pursuit of growth and jobs and extension of this recovery is the single most critical thing available to us to get the deficit down.