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Among the delegates to next week’s Republican National Convention, Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating is the most popular potential vice-presidential nominee.
That conclusion is the result of a random survey of almost one-fifth of the Republican National Convention delegates, conducted July 12-15 by Arnold Steinberg and Associates for the American Conservative Union. The second most popular vice-presidential choice among the convention delegates is Rep. John Kasich of Ohio.
This is significant both because both Keating and Kasich are pro-life. The delegates were not prompted by the pollsters to respond to the names of Keating and Kasich, but offered their names spontaneously.
The survey is also significant because of the potential candidates who did not score as well as Keating and Kasich: Retired Gen. Colin Powell placed fifth, just ahead of Alan Keyes. Sen. John McCain placed seventh, while Gov. Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania — the candidate with the highest profile in the mainstream media, and, to some extent, with George W. Bush himself — placed only fourth, behind Keating, Kasich and Elizabeth Dole.
This suggests that the delegates to the Republican convention are thinking differently than the professional pundits and political reporters handicapping the Republican vice-presidential sweepstakes — who continue to hold up not only Ridge, McCain and Powell as good choices for Bush, but also Fred Thompson and Bill Frist of Tennessee, two moderate-to-liberal senators who barely register among the sort of Republican activists who become convention delegates. (Thompson was cited by 3 percent as their first or second choice for vice president. Frist was cited by none.)
Thompson, a former lobbyist and lawyer, is best known for chairing a Senate committee that investigated whether Chinese government money was funneled into the Clinton-Gore reelection campaign. At the Senate impeachment trial, he voted to acquit President Clinton of lying to a federal grand jury.
Frist, according to his Senate financial disclosure report, owns a trust that includes $5-25 million worth of stock in HCA, a company that was started in part by his father, and that is run by his brother, who is its single largest shareholder. HCA runs a number of health maintenance organizations. It is America’s largest hospital chain, and as such is one of the nation’s largest recipients of Medicare dollars.
Frist describes himself as pro-life with exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother. But an HCA spokesman told Human Events in 1998 that the company allows its individual hospitals to determine whether or not to provide abortions — and some do.
Frist’s effective position on the issue as a voting senator was revealed in 1998, when he led the fight on the Senate floor to ensure the confirmation of pro-partial-birth-abortion Dr. David Satcher as surgeon general and director of the Public Health Service.
The big fear on the part of many delegates is that if Bush chooses a pro-choice running mate, it could destroy Bush’s greatest asset: the remarkable unity he has forged in the Republican Party. A pro-choice nominee, they say, would literally drive from the party a large bloc of its most dedicated and conscientious supporters.
John McCain put together a coalition consisting largely of liberal Republicans and independents, and won the New Hampshire primary as well as the hearts of the media. Moving toward the South Carolina primary, McCain lurched left and Bush gravitated right — particularly on abortion. At a Feb. 15 South Carolina debate sponsored by CNN’s “Larry King Live,” McCain attacked pro-life literature distributed in the state that touted Bush as being committed to the pro-life plank, and then challenged Bush to join him in working to amend that plank.
Bush said: “John, I think we need to keep the platform the way it is. This is a pro-life party. … We need to be a pro-life party.”
McCain emerged as an unacceptable choice for many pro-lifers, while Bush actively courted their support in his hour of greatest need. Two weeks later, during the Virginia primary campaign, Bush sewed up the nomination when McCain attacked Christian leaders Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell as a proxy for all social conservatives in the Republican coalition.
Ironically, unnoticed by the establishment press, McCain’s attacks not only solidified Bush’s support within the GOP, it increased his support among cultural traditionalists outside the GOP — most notably among Reagan Democrats in the northern Midwest.
McCain, despite himself, helped to position Bush perfectly to win the presidency. To keep himself in that position all the way through November, many, perhaps most, GOP delegates believe Bush needs to make only one more shrewd strategic move: Choose a pro-life running mate who has the experience and qualifications to serve as president if fate ever requires him or her to do so. A great many convention delegates believe if he does so next week, their party will quite likely control both Congress and the White House next year.
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