GOP platform stays conservative course, with few surprises

NEW YORK -- The Republican Party platform that emerged yesterday after two days of minimal conflict and no rancor is a solidly conservative but stay-the-course document, a sharp contrast to the party's ringing manifesto of four years ago.

The initiatives of 2000 -- steep tax cuts, education revisions -- have since become law under President Bush, but other unrealized proposals from the platform of 2000, such as privatizing a portion of Social Security, are recycled this year. The controversial "personal retirement account" idea is included in a section of the platform called "Ushering in an Ownership Era," which also calls for making the tax cuts permanent.

There are few new major proposals in a statement of party principles that conforms in virtually all of its nearly 100 pages to the campaign stands of Bush, who will formally be renominated here at Madison Square Garden on Thursday.

Tightly controlled by party leaders, the meeting of the 110-member platform committee featured few disputes and most of those were at the ideological margins of party orthodoxy. It was almost a mirror-image of the equally well-behaved Democrats at their platform proceedings last month.

Senate majority leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, who chaired the Republican platform deliberations, said loyalty to the president was responsible for the collegial tone during discussions in subcommittee meetings, behind the scenes, and on the floor of the full committee meetings to reach consensus. But Frist also conceded not everyone is happy with everything in the document.

"The clarity of the leadership gave us something to unite behind," Frist told reporters at the conclusion of the committee meeting.

The new platform, which the Republican National Convention is expected to ratify Monday, the opening day of the four-day event, is sharply different in tone and substance from its immediate predecessor. The platform, like its Democratic counterpart, is dominated by the issues of fighting terrorism and homeland security, almost two weeks shy of the third anniversary of the terrorist attacks that devastated New York. Most of the Republican document is a congratulatory retrospective of the Bush administration's actions to fight terrorism and support for further efforts, such as increased funding for security in the nation's ports, a vulnerability Democratic challenger John F. Kerry has zeroed in on many times.

But there are other significant shifts in the Republican platform compared with four years ago.

Gone is the call of 2000 for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. Recession, the Bush tax cuts, and the cost of the war contributed to a record-high budget deficit. The Republican platform does not list the tax cut among the factors driving a deficit it calls "unwelcome but manageable." Instead, the new platform applauds Bush's plan to cut the deficit in half within five years and advocates a pay-as-you-go policy for programs considered essential.

Similarly, soaring oil prices that are creating high gasoline prices and a drag on the economic recovery receive only a passing mention in a two-page section of this year's platform calling for "a balanced energy policy."

Four years ago, the platform, a broadside at the Clinton administration's foreign policy, included tough talk on oil.

The few moments of real drama involved a toughening of the platform's antigay rights language, not only supporting a constitutional ban on gay marriage but also expressing opposition to the extension of spousal rights, such as those legalized in same-sex civil unions in Vermont.

The minority of the platform committee members favoring abortion rights experienced their quadrennial rout with minimal complaint.

An attempt to enshrine in the platform a total ban on embryonic stem cell research was easily defeated, preserving language that endorses Bush's restrictions on federally funded research.

Critics of the nation's immigration policies failed to gain enough support to sharpen vague "reform" language that calls for "legal, safe, orderly, and humane" immigration laws. The plank lauds Bush's support for granting temporary worker status to undocumented immigrants.