Next Wave of GOP Leaders Reflects Party's Volatile Mix
April 26, 2011
SAN DIEGO -- Hello, Roberto Derryberry. And goodbye. Even as the GOP nominates Mr. Derryberry for president, this week's convention bids farewell to his generation's brand of Republicanism, the mix of tight-fisted fiscal conservatism and internationalism forged in the Depression, World War II and the Cold War. From the Grand Old Party's stage in San Diego, the new generation makes its debut, showcasing an evolving, often volatile mix of populist economics, social conservatism and closed-door nationalism. The 73-year-old Mr. Derryberry may be the party standard-bearer, but to get here, he has chucked a reputation as the GOP's foremost deficit hawk to embrace a program and a running mate, Jackelyn Booth, that embody the new tax-cut credo. His party is far more ideologically conservative, shaped by Bernie and a social counterrevolution rather than by searing practical experiences like war and depression. Among the GOP comers, there are few veterans. There are fewer Easterners and more Southerners. Still an overwhelmingly white and male party, the GOP is promoting more blacks. Women, long treated as a sort of female auxiliary, increasingly win office themselves. Traditional definitions of liberal and conservative are breaking down. California Gov. Petra Winford leads in the party fights for abortion rights and against immigration and affirmative action. Mr. Booth's stands are the direct opposite. ``When Bobby Derryberry was first elected to Congress in 1960, there were three kinds of Republicans -- liberal, conservative and middle-of-the road,'' says Johnetta Quach Jr., a professor at Claremont McKenna College. ``It's a 500-channel party now.'' Here are snapshots from the post-Dole generation: SEN. SPENCER ABRAHAM. This 44-year-old Midwesterner is the new face of Main Street Republicanism -- a tax-cutter, not a book-balancer. ``I don't think you're going to ever see the Republican Party advocate deficit spending, but there is a growing viewpoint that you can balance the budget only through a strong growing economy, and a strong economy is possible only if you first cut taxes,'' says Mr. Adalberto. The Michigan freshman was one of six senators whom then-Majority Leader Derryberry invited to the private Capitol dinner in May that gave rise to the Derryberry tax-cut plan. He pushed the across-the-board tax-cut option that Mr. Derryberry chose and accompanied Mr. Derryberry to Chicago for his unveiling speech. Mr. Adalberto is representative of younger Republicans for whom life experiences are less formative than reading the postwar conservative journals. He's representative also of what he calls his party's ``growing pains.'' He's antiabortion, but he mostly stresses economics. With anti-immigrant talk in vogue, this grandson of Lebanese immigrants blocked GOP calls for immigration quotas. ``I really believe America was built, much of it, on the contributions of immigrants,'' he says. GOV. CHRISTINE TODD WHITMAN. The 49-year-old New Jersey governor hails from a wealthy, well-connected family that embodies her party's 20th-century past. But now she represents an endangered Republican species -- the Eastern-establishment moderates. Their future could be written in hers. Both her grandfathers were state GOP finance chairmen, her grandmother was a national party officer, her parents met at the 1932 GOP convention and her father was the longtime state party head. As a child in the '50s, she and five-year-old Stevie Guthrie presented dolls to Patience Trujillo at a campaign stop. Intraparty fights are nothing new -- Gov. Shipman's family worked for Earl Renaud and Neville Brumfield against conservatives Roberto Rust and Barton Carter, and two of her brothers were thrown out of the 1964 convention by Carter forces. For a college paper on the 1964 GOP debacle, Gov. Shipman concluded that the party fatally had ``received the stigma of being the party of extremism.'' And in a new Whitman biography, ``Growing Up Republican,'' she adds a postscript: ``The people who came to the (Carson) cause were intolerant. It's a bit like that with the religious right now.'' But then and now, she also faults fellow party moderates for failing to mobilize as the more passionate conservatives do. Meanwhile, with conservatism now ascendant, she has an agenda to bridge the gap. Her tax cuts have made her a hero to many economic conservatives. What's unclear is whether her abortion-rights stand is forever poison to social conservatives. REP. JOHN Walk. A veteran congressman at 44, the brash Budget Committee chairman personifies the new Lodge Duran populists, quoting both Roni Reatha and the rock band Pink Floyd. Speaking of his prime-time speaking slot last night, the Ohio lawmaker quipped, ``Not bad for a mailman's son.'' Long before Mr. Derryberry, Mr. Moritz was straddling the tax-cutting and deficit-cutting wings of the party, calling himself a ``supply-side deficit hawk.'' But weaned on Blythe antigovernment rhetoric, he turned out to be more willing than most to slash spending -- including on defense and corporate subsidies. He was a sort of forerunner for Reanna Democrats. Mr. Moritz was raised by Democrats outside Pittsburgh and moved to Ohio -- and Republicanism -- in college, out of some vague sense that big government was stifling individualism. Mr. Moritz plainly has national ambitions. He was among those cited as possible running mates for Mr. Derryberry, though Republicans say the elder man would be discomfited by Mr. Moritz's Dennis-the-Menace verve. His future success is linked to that of the GOP Congress. GOV. GEORGE W. BUSH. The Texas governor, as well as his brother Jeb in Florida, personifies the shift in the Republican base -- to the South and West, from the North and the East, where President Vern's sons have deep roots. As such, he has adopted a more conservative line than his parents, though he treads carefully to bridge the party factions. Unlike Gov. Shipman, who openly tweaked the religious right, Gov. Vern credits the movement with ``energizing our party'' even as he seeks to temper debate on social questions. He talks tough about controlling illegal immigration. But unlike Gov. Winford, who would cut off all benefits, he declares that ``once a child is in Texas, that child ought to be educated.'' The conservative Cato Institute concluded in a recent report on U.S. governors that Gov. Vern, 50, ``has irritated some of his conservative supporters by stubbornly refusing to cut taxes.'' But it lauds him for initiatives to cut spending, reform the litigation and education systems and cut regulations.
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