FIRING LINE is produced and directed by WARREN STEIBEL.

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1 The copyright laws of the United States (Title 17, U.S. Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. If a user makes a request for, or later uses a photocopy or reproduction (including handwritten copies) for purposes in excess of fair use, that user may be liable for copyright infringement. Users are advised to obtain permission from the copyright owner before any re-use of this material. Use of this material is for private, non-commercial, and educational purposes; additional reprints and further distribution is prohibited. Copies are not for resale. All other rights reserved. For further information, contact Director, Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford University, Stanford, CA Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. c FIRlnG Line HOST: WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR. GUESTS: BILL RUSHER, ALAN KEYES, PEGGY NOONAN DAVID FRUM, RICK BROOKHISER, ED ROLLINS SUBJECT: "WHERE IS THE GOP GOING? PART I I: ABORTION" FIRING LINE is produced and directed by WARREN STEIBEL. This is a transcript of the Firing Line program (#1017/2407) taped in New York City on August 8, 1994 and telecast later on public television stations. copyright 1994 NATIONAL REVIEW

2 We resume our inquiry into the future of the Republican Party. We do so with six guests who are terribly bright and terribly Republican, though in almost every case their devotion to the party derives from a devotion to the party's principles, which some days are more visible than other days. What these are and how alive they are is also a question before the house. To introduce them briefly, Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor of National Review, at work on his study of George Washington, frequent contributor to Time and The New Yorker. David Frum is the author of Dead Right, just published, a devastating inquiry into the question of whether the GOP can accomplish anything truly worthwhile. Dr. Alan Keyes has his PhD from Harvard, has served in high positions in Republican administrations, and contended for senator of Maryland, a contest which unhappily he lost. Peggy Noonan is probably the world's most renowned speechwriter. His current book is Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. A reading of it will enhance your life, your liberty, and your happiness. Ed Rollins is a political technician of considerable accomplishments, among them, he ran the campaign in 1984 which resulted in President Reagan's winning 49 of our 50 states. And William Rusher, the syndicated columnist and author, is a lawyer who left his profession in 1956 to become the publisher of National Review. Gentlemen, Ms. Noonan. We spent the first session on health. The hottest quarrel as I see it in the ranks of the Republican Party has to do with the question of abortion. The last three Republican platforms called for a constitutional amendment to undo Roe v. Wade. Governor Whitman of New Jersey--your client, Ed--recently advocated jettisoning that plank in the platform. So has Governor Weld of Massachusetts recommended. There are, of course, two questions. The first is: Is abortion an offense against human life? The second is: How should the GOP posture itself on the question, given existing consolidations of thought on the matter. We will tackle the second question first. In fact, we may never get around to the first question, which of course is one of the problems of politics. Mr. Brookhiser, if you were given the assignment to write the plank in the platform of the Republican Party two years from now, what would it say? 1

3 MR. BROOKHISER: Well, I think-- Well, what I would do is I would pass the baton to Bill Kristel and George Weigel, who have done some work on this. They have come up with a plank. These people are anti-abortion, they are pro-life, and they think that the Republican Party must be, for reasons of principle, for reasons of political morality, for reasons that go to what we mean to be as a nation. They think the plank should be rewritten, I think in large part because the world has changed since the '84 and the '88 planks. You're not going to get that constitutional amendment; it's just not going to happen any time soon, and to advance those goals, which they hold at heart and which-- Why shouldn't-- MR. BROOKHISER: --most of the Republican Party hold at heart. Why shouldn't the plank be paradigmatic? MR. BROOKHISER: Why should not the plank be paradigmatic? Yes. MR. BROOKHISER: Well, because look, you've got-- When did abolition creep into a plank? MR. BROOKHISER: Well, Lincoln won on a plank not of abolishing slavery in the slave states. I know, yes. MR. BROOKHISER: The plank, when he won in 1860, was to prevent it from going into the territories. And the Republican strategy until the war began was always very carefully said that we do not intend to abolish it in the slave states, but we do intend to prevent it from going into the territories, because we believe--and we believe the Constitution should recognize--that it is wrong, and to let it increase the size in which it exists would be a tacit recognition that slavery is right, and that is what we can't accept. Well, how does that instruct us on whether something ought to be paradigmatic?--i.e., in the best of all possible worlds-- MR. BROOKHISER: Well, it instructs us because on the one hand, you could say that the Republican position in 1860 was a practical one, or a less than totally principled one because it wasn't abolitionist. It didn't propose to chase down that particular evil and root it out wherever it existed the day after Abraham Lincoln got elected president. On the other hand 2

4 it was paradigmatic because it insisted that slavery was wrong, that the founders had recognized that it was wrong, and that the Constitution and the government were going to continue to recognize that that was the case. Now that's not-- objective. So give that position using abortion as the MR. BROOKHISER: Well, it's not an absolute parallel because of course slavery-- You know, slavery had been in the American system for the 80 years that it had been a country and then for centuries before that, whereas with abortion we're talking about something that--roe v. Wade is just a couple of decades old. So it's not such a deeply rooted reality that Republicans have to make the kind of acknowledgement of its existence that they did with slavery in But I think the Kristel-Weigel position is--it's both a realistic one and it's also a principled one. And by the way, if the Republican Party backs off it to take the Weld route, the Bill Weld route, the one thing we know--looking at this purely as pragmatists--the one thing we know is that the way to get slaughtered on this issue is to change your mind and that Republicans-- Well, it didn't hurt Ms. Whitman, did it? MR. BROOKHISER: Well, she had never changed her mind. But it had happened to her predecessor in New Jersey, Jim Courter, who ran against-- What about Weld? MR. BROOKHISER: --Bill Florio. Weld had never changed his mind. He had always been a liberal Republican. But if you analogize from the case of individuals to the case of the party, we had evidence in two governors' races in '89, in New Jersey and in Virginia, where there were Republicans who had been pro-life, who changed to being pro-choice, and they got creamed because the anti-abortion people didn't--you know, refused to trust them--they were turncoats--and the pro-abortion people, they didn't pick up anything from them. So if you're just going to be a pure pragmatist, if you're going to leave morality aside and only look at it as a calculation, the one statement you can make is that if you change your mind on abortion in an attempt to pick up votes, you will fail and be crushed. Peggy, do you buy that analysis? MS. NOONAN: Yes, I do pretty much. I'm unclear actually on what the Kristal-Weigel position is with-- It's one that enumerates constraints and-- 3

5 MS. NOONAN: That supports the idea of numerous constraints? Well, sort of like the Casey situation in Pennsylvania. If you are under 16 you've got to have a mother's okay or whatever it is, you must wait a week, can't be in the third trimester. They are constraints that slightly dilute the Roe v. Wade absolute position. MS. NOONAN: amendment? But it gets off the idea of a constitutional Yes, it does. MS. NOONAN: It does. Well, I'll tell you, I don't think I disagree with anything that Rick says. I would only add to it, I suppose, that I think if the Republican Party changes its vocal and consistent opposition to abortion, if we make any changes in that area, I think it would tear the party in two. And I think it would give a lot of impetus to the growth of a third party in the year--certainly by the year Do you think that's right, Ed, or-- MR. ROLLINS: I would totally concur that if the Republican Party walks away from the present platform, or at least some dialogue about the sanctity of life, in which the pro-life movement feels it has been abandoned by a party that it has to a certain extent made its home, then I think you have got long, long term, serious problems. I still think there's a very important question which-- When you think in terms of how a platform is drafted, it is not drafted by Bill Kristal, as able as he is, or it's not drafted by Ms. Whitman if she is not the nominee of the party. Candidates will run through a primary process and they will talk about issues. The pro-life movement is still a very significant factor in primaries and caucuses that nominate and select delegates. Because of the intensity factor? MR. ROLLINS: Because of the intensity factor and because they have been the activists. There is not a major player running for president at this point in time. Now if Pete Wilson ends up getting in the game later on or Bill Weld ends up getting in the game--but everyone else, to the best of my knowledge, is pro-life. I don't think you are going to watch Bob Dole or Jack Kemp or Bill Bennett or anybody else--dick Cheney, who may get into this race, abandon that position as a candidate. They may wish it went away in the heat of the summer in the convention, but the bottom line is they are going to run on those issues and they are going to basically try to build support among those--and have delegates elected who support those positions, so it's much different. 4

6 How did you find it in Maryland, Dr. Keyes, when you ran there on this issue? MR. KEYES: Well, I ran at a time when there was also a referendum going on in Maryland on the most liberal abortion bill in the country, and I think their referendum was defeated by an unexpectedly large margin in the state--partly at least through the manipulation of the political process by the Democratic majority. But I also think though, that there is a problem, and there was there, with an unwillingness to face the issue in a forthright fashion on the part of the people in the Republican Party who take a pro-life position but then don't want to argue it. And if you don't argue it at all levels, then of course you come out at the short end of the stick, because the folks on the other side are arguing it constantly and do so as if they think they are right, with no embarrassment whatsoever. I think that the genius, insofar as it's there, of the position as I understand it--and this is based mainly on the article in National Review that Kristel and Weigel produced--has less to do--because I don't think there is much of a dispute if one backs away from the explicit endorsement of a human life amendment. Some people would be upset about that, others--including Phyllis Schlafly and so forth--i don't think would be, so long as you maintain the party's commitment in principle to a right understanding of the abortion issue. That's the key issue, and if I understood what Kristel and Weigel have written, one of the things they're arguing is not whether or not you back away in principle--that you can't do-- So the Welds and the Wilsons and these people must be unhappy. And I agree with the notion if we do not make them unhappy, then we must-- MR. BROOKHISER: We haven't done our job. MR. KEYES: --destroy the Republican Party. You have a choice. Make the choice. Make these people happy at the cost of destroying the Republican Party, because a lot of the foot soldiers will walk. And I think there is no doubt about this. They will walk, they will stay home, and you will watch Republicans go down to defeat in droves, and I think the party will be setting itself on the road of the Whigs, who also didn't understand that you must face issues of principle at that level. But I think the key thing that's happening in the Kristel position as I understand it is a redefinition of how you approach the discussion, part of which I think is correct, and that is that you want to emphasize the extent to which abortion involves issues of responsibility rather than just issues of rights. Rather than seeing it as a conflict of rights, mother versus child, you see it as a question of the responsibility that we must take, that individuals must take, for the life of the unborn child. That is a step in the right direction, in my view. It doesn't go all the way, but it's a 5

7 step. And I say it doesn't go all the way because again, what you have to understand, I think, is that abortion is not an issue over here aside from all the other issues we discuss. I think it's the symbol of the deepest and most profound--the fundamental issue facing this country today. It's facing it in health care, in crime, in drug addiction, illegitimacy, in every way. And there is only one issue on the table--only one issue--that I think goes through everything in our politics, and that issue is the erosion and moral collapse of this country. The moral character of this people is in some areas dead, in other areas dying, and if we don't recover it, the whole system, economically and politically, will collapse. MR. KEYES: Bill, how is-- Abortion is the paradigm of that. --that going to be communicated? MR. RUSHER: I simply couldn't agree more with what Dr. Keyes has just said. I think that the moral issue--however you phrase it, however you generalize it--is the issue toward which all American politics is now heading whether we like it or not. I will say this: I think the religious right has been getting a very bum rap so far. I haven't discovered from them--and I've gone out and talked to them--the kind of fanaticism, the single-issue fanaticism with which they are attributed in the press. If anything, there is more fanaticism of that type among the pro-choice, so-called, Republicans who just are not about to take this kind of nonsense from the religious right. I ve talked to S.aEaHfd5&M t.6t~mtemn--who is head of the Christian coalitto'f{"'''th'''''''cayt~f'ornta ';''''' '' 'where I live--ralph Reed, head of it nationally. These are very reasonable people. They are not talking about refusal to compromise. They are not talking about walking away if they don't get their way. But they do-- I think we can understand that very well. But doesn't that contradict what we just heard from Rick Brookhiser, that people will be so affronted by any tergiversation there that they will vote the other side-- MR. RUSHER: Well, if we actually-- --or stay home? MR. RUSHER: If we actually weasel, yes, then we would be losing our way. But I don't think that-- I think that where the American people, broadly speaking, stand on this is against abortion. I think the claims that the polls show otherwise are simply wrong. I think that in difficult cases, for which we can recognize exceptions--rape, incest, the life of the 6

8 mother--you do get a qualification of that opposition to abortion. But we can express that. I thought the Weigel Kristol statement did it extremely well in National Review. And we can carry forward with the true opposition to abortion. MR. FRUM: I would suggest you get ready for weasel-mania. I think you're going to see a lot of weaseling. I think you're seeing a lot of weaseling now. One of the things, when I was researching my book, I was unclear whether Dick Cheney was pro-life or pro-abortion. So I called his office to try to find out. (laughter] That's an experience I would recommend. You are going to see a lot of weaseling, you're seeing a lot of weaseling now, and if the Republicans lose in 1 96, I think you are going to see this thing jettisoned like a watermelon pit. And I think Dr. Keyes is right, that the fight on abortion requires you to fight so many of the dominant trends of American culture on so many fronts. You have to reject the dominant theory of how constitutional adjudication would work. You have to reject the common assumptions about the way people conduct themselves sexually. You have to reject the common assumptions that life is defined by its quality. To continue to be as opposed to it as Republicans have been calls for kind of an independence from the prevailing thought of your time, that-- argument? How did you get the Supreme Court into that MR. FRUM: Oh, because if you're going to-- The only way that anything will happen with abortion--! don't think we are very likely to see a constitutional amendment--is from the Supreme Court, as a constitutional right. It's not a traditional way of adjudicating quarrels between-- This was an ex nihilation, I mean, all of a sudden they have discovered-- MR. FRUM: That's right. That's right. What I meant was that to do anything about abortion requires that the deep legal theories of how the Constitution is to be explained that hold all law schools, that hold almost everybody who takes part in this discussion, those are going to have to be jettisoned. And you know, the idea that Republicans are going to be able to say, you know, that that case was wrongly decided, that there isn't a right of sexual privacy in the Constitution, it isn't there, sorry. All of those things require a kind of intellectual independence that-- MR. KEYES: You see, I think you just made the case as to why the abortion issue is in fact the fundamental issue, why you cannot weasel or waffle on it, and if you do-- Because what 7

9 you are essentially saying is, if you stand on this front, then you must stand on all those other fronts until you win. And you rejoice in that. MR. KEYES: The opposite is also true. If you don't stand on this front, then you must collapse on all those other fronts and the battle is over. What exactly is it that we are standing for if we don't stand for an understanding of human sexuality that can restore the traditional family? What is it that we stand for if we don't stand for an understanding of judicial adjudication that restores the rights of the people as opposed to the tyranny of the courts? What is it that we stand for if we don't stand against the redefinition of sexuality that implies the end of masculinity and the death, in a way, of all of the values that have sustained this culture? I think, David-- That's a rhetorical question-- [laughter] MR. KEYES: --that you have in fact put your finger on the reason why you cannot afford not to fight the abortion issue. Because in point of fact, you are right. All the rest of the corruption in various ways that's going on right now seeps back to this. If you can't begin to win the battle here, to restore a sense that-- Look-- MR. KEYES: --and I didn't quite get finished before--the key thing about abortion is that you have interpreted rights in such a way that there are no constraints whatsoever on those rights, including the need to respect at the most fundamental level the sources of your own freedom and-- Well, now I-- MR. KEYES: --the rights of others. If we are giving up that battle-- I-- I vibrate-- MR. KEYES: --on abortion, then we have given up the battle. Why are we fighting anything? I vibrate sympathetically with you; however, I think one should bear in mind the responsibility of taking into account what others would say if confronted with such arguments. Suppose I were to say I am in favor of abortion, but I am against euthanasia. Are you saying I am inconsistent? 8

10 MR. KEYES: In favor of-- Well, I would have to know what your reasons are. To simply declare a position-- Well, but you just finished saying-- MR. KEYES: --doesn't tell me whether you are consistent or not. What is your reasoning? Then I'll tell you. You just finished saying that all these positions collapse as a result of the position, the axiomatic presence, of the abortion issue. I am saying that people just won't understand what you are saying. Because they have made a moral exception on the abortion position, they don't think this condemns them to taking loose positions on the matter of, say, euthanasia. MR. KEYES: Well, but in point of fact, it's not a question of what they think, it's a question of what is in fact the case. And abortion--not in terms of "I'm against it--i'm for it"- this is irrelevant--the point is, what is your reasoning as you reach the conclusion that you can take a position that favors abortion? MR. KEYES: Okay, I'm arguing with you. Is that reasoning then consistent? I'd say my reasoning is that you are entitled to the protections of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment when you emerge from the womb. MR. KEYES: But on what grounds are you making the determination that you can be denied those protections prior to that emergence that aren't simply arbitrary? Because that is the mother's choice as defined by the Supreme Court, which has a commanding presence in these adjudications. MR. KEYES: So what is the source of the mother's right to make that choice, since-- As safeguarded in-- MR. KEYES: Let me finish. --since as I understand it-- --the Supreme Court. MR. KEYES: --since as I understand it, parents don't have the right of life and death over their children. Locke denied it; so did every other liberal theorist. 9

11 MR. KEYES: No, I didn't say they did. So where does it come from? No, I'm quoting the position in Roe v. Wade. MR. KEYES: That position is inconsistent with the declaration that all human beings are entitled to respect for the fundamental right to life. And until you have explained to me-- So that-- MR. KEYES: --why we don't regard the fetus as a human being, which is the key question-- If the fetus is a human being, then even in Roe v. Wade they acknowledged-- Right. That's right. MR. KEYES: --that the argument falls. So the question is on what besides an arbitrary ground, an arbitrary determination- on what grounds can we deny-- MR. KEYES: I like-- --the life of a fetus? --your philosophical consistency, but we are here to talk about the future of the GOP, and I think it is probably the case that the overwhelming majority of Republicans, even those who are pro-life, would not argue, as you do, that the entire collapse of the Bill of Rights depends on making good the case for life of the fetus. MR. BROOKHISER: Well, don't we-- MR. KEYES: See, I think-- I'm sorry, I think that the case is exactly parallel to the situation of slavery--that a proper understanding of the issue requires that you understand, as Lincoln did, that this nation can't be half slave and half free, not because it's physically impossible, but because you can't hold two principles which contradict each other at the same time. Either human beings are entitled simply as such to a respect for certain rights or they are not. If they are not, then we need tribunals to determine who draws the line, and that's the point at which the whole polity collapses, because if it's an entirely arbitrary determination that decides whether I'm human or you're human or somebody else is human, then all we can do is fight about it. MR. BROOKHISER: Bill, let me try and help the politicians out here, because we're setting an almost Herculean standard it 10

12 seems like for them to obey. What we have to tell Republican politicians is a poll that was published in The Boston Globe a couple of years ago--and The Boston Globe is a very liberal newspaper. But the poll numbers were so inescapable that they gave it the headline: "Poll shows most Americans oppose most abortions." Yes, 70 percent. MR. BROOKHISER: Okay, and the way you find these number is you do an intelligent poll--that is to say, a poll unlike most of the polls that are done on this subject. You don't say--you know, you don't load your questions, you break them down and you segment them, and then you find out. When you ask people, okay, you say you're for abortion rights, but is it in this case, is it in this case, is it in this case, is it in this case? And then you count up the number of abortions that all those cases comprise, you find, as the headline said, most Americans oppose most abortions. And it's pretty hefty percentages on-- Sure. If you are going to say, "I'm going to abort because I want only boys, so I am going to have a sonogram and if it's a girl, I'll abort," there are very few people who would approve of that. I can think of a few exceptions, but very few people would. And the question is, can you package those constraints I spoke of into something that can fit into the platform so that there is a spark of recognizability? These people are pro-life, however, they understand abortions under this circumstance and the other to pacify the others. MR. RUSHER: Yes. --to could classify those-- MR. RUSHER: No reason in the world why you can't, and I am not clear whether Dr. Keyes is saying that it is impossible to make an exception for rape or incest or the life of the mother. It seems to me, whether I want to do it or not, that those are points at which a person might have a somewhat different attitude. MR. KEYES: There, see, I think the parallel is exact with the extension of slavery. You maintain the position in principle. That doesn't mean that you can't compromise with hard facts. It does mean, however, that the odd specifying, "Oh, people feel like this in these and those cases," that's very good from a practical, political point of view. What I guess I find disturbing sometimes is that folks think that that settles the issue, and it doesn't. You can't just know what people think. It is also the responsibility of the politician-statesman to 11

13 A \ help them to understand why so that they can understand how what they're doing over here relates to what they're doing over here. Why it is that abortion and health care and crime and illegitimacy all involve the same kind of issues--which because they involve the same kind of issue, allow us to forge a coalition across broad ranges of groups based on that common principle. Yes, I think there is a lot of-- MR. KEYES: And we can do so, but only by articulating what these cases have in common. There is a lot of opportunism there. I remember saying once to George McGovern when he introduced his prochoice position by saying, "Of course, I am against abortion," saying, oh, by the way, in the course of expressing yourself against abortion, what have you ever said to anybody?" For once in his life, he stopped. Because the answer is-- It's like asking Cuomo what have you ever done to discourage abortion? It becomes sort of ritualistic, not to that-- MR. BROOKHISER: He hadn't had one. [laughter] Well, Teddy Kennedy told Ken Galbraith that, of course, he disapproved of abortion except for women. [laughter] A good, faithful-- Well, you therefore are hopeful, I take it, that it is possible to enter your philosophical position and show that there is enough resilience there-- MR. RUSHER: Absolutely. --to make it politically-- MR. RUSHER: SarafikiHarEffiaii worked like a dog for Richard Riordon, the ri'~tf\ri~y&'f? ':':'~ff''':':'los Angeles, al though he was articulately pro-choice. But she is a solid, across-the-board conservative and she thought that was best for the city of Los Angeles, despite the disagreement on that point. They are a very reasonable group. MR. RUSHER: Who? The religious conservative right. Well,. thank you, gentlemen and Ms. Noonan, ladies and gentlemen. We'll be back. 12