LETTER: Dole's failure to stick to his own principles has hurt Republicans

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I would like to respond to Nick Weller's editorial in your Sept. 27 issue, "Dole may have character, but that's all he has to offer voters."

As someone who has spent lots of time and ink writing letters opposing the Bill Clinton's re-election, I would like to say that for once I was pleasantly surprised by one of his supporters.

Although I do not agree with the view that the ideas Dole is presently paying lip-service to "have been shown to be disastrous," I would like to thank Weller for saving me the trouble of pointing out a very important fact: that the character "issue" is being used by the Dole campaign to hide from the necessity of waging a campaign on ideas and policy issues.

Dole has a long record of voting like a Democrat on economic issues. He has only recently started sounding like a fiscal conservative, and not a believable one at that.

Only a few months before, he led the other Republican candidates in a race to sound the most like an old-time populist Democrat when it seemed that Steve Forbes was about to pull away from the pack.

The Republicans have not since recovered, and Dole's failure to stick to principles has contaminated the entire party.

When faced with false charges that they were "cutting" social programs like Medicare, the Republicans properly countered that they were only cutting projected growth but then failed to capitalize on a crucial opportunity to make a principled case for the eventual abolition of such programs.

Now the Democrats are setting the terms of the debate which is now, once again, only about how much we will spend on these programs.

The idea of protecting economic freedom, the primary reason I tend to support Republicans, is ultimately incompatible with restricting freedom in other areas like freedom of speech or freedom in one's bedroom.

On this count, the records of both the congressional Republicans and the president have been abysmal: Both the Telecommunications Act and the Defense of Marriage Act passed Congress and were immediately signed by the president.

Until the Republicans remember why they won in 1994, they will not enjoy the support they once did. But if the Republicans lose Congress as they deserve, what will we get?

Radical leftists will head several key committees. Ted Kennedy will once again push for socialized medicine, which he thinks will get speedy passage if his party returns to power. Perhaps this is the bitter tonic the Republicans need to return to the issues.

Perhaps this is what America needs so the policies of Clinton will no longer seem, as Weller put it, to be the "better vision for the United States."

Although I disagree with Weller's view of Clinton, he hit the nail on the head as far as Dole goes and he did this without being gratuitously insulting like another columnist who frequently appears in your paper. I thank Nick Weller for his civility.

As far as voting for one or the other of my "choices" this fall, I am afraid that they are ultimately interchangeable.

Perhaps if I have some loose change in my pocket on election day, I'll know which one to pick.

C.S. Miller

Graduate student

Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology

This item appeared in the Opinion section of the October 4, 1996 issue.

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