How big the tent? - response to National Review position towards the Republican Majority Coalition and article by Harold Johnson in the April 12, 1993 issue

Mr. Campbell takes issue with NR's account of his sort of Republicanism. Harold Johnson replies.

The Republican Majority Coalition was founded last December to refocus the Republican Party on economic and fiscal conservatism, free trade, law and order, a strong defense, and maximum individual liberty. In his Wall Street Journal op-ed of December 8, 1992, President Reagan identified these as the issues that unite Republicans. "As to other issues that draw on the deep springs of morality and emotion, let us decide that we can disagree among ourselves as Republicans and tolerate, the disagreement," Reagan wrote.

How could Ronald Reagan justify excluding issues of morality from the definition of the Republican Party, a party founded on moral opposition to slavery?

The key is in Reagan's other phrase, "maximum individual liberty." Consider the question of abortion. Clearly, Reagan was referring to this issue. People must make their individual decisions. on moral grounds, but they disagree as to whether abortion is moral or immoral. Maximum individual liberty supports minimal government involvement in the question. If one is certain full human life begins at conception, of course, abortion is itself an intrusion of the greatest kind. But how can one know that full human life begins then? The question is indeed a moral one, fundamentally of a religious, not governmental, nature. Later on in a pregnancy, one can point to objective criteria to argue for the beginning of full human life; but to hold that the moment is conception, one must have recourse to religious principle. And, Reagan appeared to be saying, that's too far for government to intrude on private morality.

Eleven years earlier, Senator Goldwater sounded a strikingly similar note in his October 1981 article in Church & State. "I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in |A,' |B,' |C,' and |D.' Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me?" Once again, we have a prominent Republican conservative objecting to the intrusion of a "moral" issue into politics.

Goldwater is pro-choice; Reagan is not. Yet each appears to believe that this "moral" issue has no place in defining Republicanism. Each is a champion of individual liberty; that includes the primacy of individual conscience. We Republicans believe government intrusion into the workplace, into international trade, into entrepreneurship, requires a very strong reason, which is frequently quite lacking. Why does our skepticism over government intrusion not continue over to the issues that Reagan characterized as drawing "on the deep springs of morality and emotion"?

Stay Focused

If Republicans could simply focus on the economic issues, they'd find that President Clinton is handing us a very full plate to digest. Virtually all Republicans agree that we should reduce the deficit far more dramatically than Clinton does; that spending cuts are the only reliable way to cut the deficit; that tax increases have, in modern times, almost always led to even greater spending. Virtually all would agree that a great prescription for many social pathologies, including the break-up of the family, is to return real growth to the economy, with jobs in the private sector attainable for all seeking them. And all Republicans can take pride in the defeat of the Soviet empire, orchestrated and brought about by President Ronald Reagan, at a time when most Democrats were critical of his hard line in negotiations with the Soviets. Let us emphasize those points, and we will have the strength to unite our Party, for the good of our country.

In this publication, an article recently appeared ["None of the Above," by Harold Johnson, April 12] attacking the Republican Majority Coalition and me, its chairman, suggesting that somehow we do not live by the Republican principles of economic conservatism and party loyalty. The facts are: 1) The National Taxpayers Union announced that I was the single lowest spender in Congress, out of all 435 members. 2) In my four years in Congress, I never voted for a tax increase. 3) I have walked precincts registering new Republicans, raised money for our party and its nominees, and, including the last Senate race in California, always supported the party nominees and withheld any criticism during the general election campaign.

The ideals of our party will not succeed unless, as President Reagan said, we unite behind those deeply held principles we agree on and "decide that we can disagree among ourselves as Republicans and tolerate the disagreement."

Mr. Campbell is a professor of law at Stanford University and the national chairman of the Republican Majority Coalition. He was the director of the Bureau of Competition in the first Reagan Administration, and served in the U.S. Congress from 1989 to 1993.

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