But Pratt is at home in a second world. It was on display recently in the Dallas Convention Center. Exhibitors at a “Preparedness Expo ‘96” hawked everything from survival shelters to Chinese-made assault rifles to paranoid classics of anti-Semitic literature. Pratt, who views the larger National Rifle Association as weak-willed, shared the dais with some infamous characters. One was Bo Gritz, the ex-Green Beret who gave attendees his latest count of Jews in the Clinton administration. Another was militia leader Mark Koernke–the “Mark from Michigan” who thinks U.N. troops are preparing to load Americans into “aerial prison barges” and whose rantings have drawn the attention of investigators probing the Oklahoma City bombing.
It’s a free country, the Gun Owners are a peaceful group and no one thinks they have anything like a direct connection to the madmen who perpetrated the Oklahoma nightmare. But even before Oklahoma, some Republicans worried that their party appeared to be in thrall to its most conservative wing. Now, like the flash of an explosion, the Oklahoma bombing has illuminated a once dark landscape much farther afield: a radical fringe of militant gun owners, “hate radio” talk-show hosts, racial extremists and religious cultists. Their numbers are small-and their GOP ties tenuous at best. But their fervor is influential at the grass roots Republicans call their own.
The blast may have created some treacherous ground for the GOP’s 1996 presidential contenders – nine at last count. Winning the battle for the mainstream right-NRA members, religious conservatives, pro-life activists -has become essential. They guard the Khyber Pass to the nomination, the one that runs through Iowa and New Hampshire. Now feeling besieged, the radical elements could make the rest more demanding. “They’re going to want candidates to show some guts,” said Scott Reed, Bob Dole’s campaign manager. “They’re going to want the candidates to stand up to Democrats and the media.” But showing “guts” could dismay the wider public that will vote in the general election. “Pandering could be counterproductive ,” said the manager of another campaign. Of course, he wouldn’t say so on the record.
Get ready for the millennial election-and the apocalyptic rhetoric that will accompany it. The Republican fight will preach the End of Days if Bill Clinton is re-elected. Hoping to divide the GOP and paint it as outside the mainstream, Democrats want to force Republicans to defend-or denounce-the radical fringe unearthed by Oklahoma City. Democrats may be deluding themselves. The antigovernment tide hasn’t ebbed, and won’t suddenly be reversed by the insanity in Oklahoma. And if the Democrats are too cynical or sweeping, the tactic will backfire - as it did last week when President Clinton seemed to indict all talk radio in the tragedy.
Still, the rhetorical war is on. Democrats are eager to use guilt-by-association tactics used against them for a generation by everyone from Spiro Agnew to Newt Gingrich. They understand the irony-and relish it. A generation ago Richard Nixon denounced radical antiwar activists. The deadly bombing of the Mathematics Research Center at the University of Wisconsin in 1970 fostered an aura of crisis, and helped Nixon link Democrats to a violent fringe. “The Republicans have hammered us for years about ’left-wing extremists’,” says Paul Begala, a top Clinton political adviser. “Let’s see what they say about ‘right-wing extremists’.”
As always, there’s just enough truth to make guilt-by-association charges plausible. The GOP sweep last fall brought into the House a handful of members with ties to militant militias. One is Rep. Steve Stockman of Texas, a onetime homeless man who managed to defeat the Democratic chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Jack Brooks, in a race in southeastern Texas. Once the NRA’s “Man of the Year,” Brooks had committed a fatal error: he voted for a ban on assault weapons. But though the NRA wouldn’t endorse Stockman, the Gun Owners did–and gave him nearly $7,000, the most to any candidate last year.
Texas law-enforcement authorities, NEWSWEEK has learned, are convinced that militia members in the Beaumont area worked in Stockman’s campaign –a charge he says he can neither confirm nor deny. But even after the Oklahoma bombing, Stockman refused to distance himself from the militia movement. “Just because somebody’s part of a group,” he said, “we can’t blame the whole group.” Privately, top Republicans in Texas are urging prominent Democrats to switch parties to challenge Stockman in the ‘96 GOP primary-and offering to raise money for them.
Democrats are homing in on two other legislators sympathetic to the extreme right. Rep. Joe Knollenberg, of suburban Detroit, shared a campaign platform last November with Michigan Militia members at a Gun Owners event. Members of the United States Militia Association worked last fall in the Idaho campaign of Rep. Helen Chenoweth, says the group’s leader. Chenoweth is a champion of those who view federal law-enforcement agencies, especially the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, as an evil cabal. At a recent hearing she convened in Boise, Chenoweth gave militia members a platform on which to publicize their theories.
Stockman, Knollenberg and Chenoweth are at the bottom of the GOP ladder–and in themselves of little concern to the GOP hierarchy. But Democrats like Begala think the new visibility of the fringe right could taint the mainstream GOP by making antigovernment rhetoric seem dangerous. The most immediate-and potentially damaging-issue is gun control. In a sense it’s not fair: the bombing in Oklahoma City has less to do with guns than the Simpson trial does with knives. But the bombing increases the cross-pressures on the GOP Opposition to gun control is the rounding obsession of the militia movement. They were outraged by the assault-weapons ban. So were many other GOP voters. The NRA, a mainstay of the party, has made repealing the ban its top priority-and has been increasingly employing the apocalyptic language of the far-right militias. Last year’s gun-control bill, the NRA said in a recent newspaper ad, will lead to a “reign of storm-trooper tactics.”
And yet GOP leaders know that polls show the American public overwhelmingly favors the ban–and supports even stricter gun-control measures. In devising his market-tested “Contract With America,” Newt Gingrich left out a promise to repeal the ban. “Candidates are still going to woo the gun crowd,” says Roger Stone, campaign chairman for Sen. Arlen Specter. “But you can’t go into the meeting with an Uzi.”
So what do big-time Republicans do now, post-Oklahoma? For the most part they keep their heads down. Though he hasn’t satisfied the hard-liners in the “social issue” crowd, Senator Gramm of Texas has been the most systematic cultivator of gun-lobby support. He’s already won the endorsement of leaders of the Gun Owners of New Hampshire. But his advisers say he’s not going to push quickly on his vow to repeal the assault-weapons ban. Neither will GOP Senate leader Dole, the front runner. Just one month before the bombing, Dole tried to match Gramm in pro-gun fervor, promising to lead the fight to repeal the ban. That angered some of his leading supporters.
A few candidates may be willing to take on the gun crowd, or at least ignore them. One is Gov. Pete Wilson of California. He supports the federal assault-weapons ban, and proudly advertises California’s own version- which is tougher than the federal one. Another Californian, Rep. Bob Dornan, is also against repealing the assault-weapons ban. “Gramm dragged Dole into that, but he won’t drag me,” says Dornan. “I believe in the Second Amendment, but I don’t think everybody has to have a Chinese-made AK-47.”
Another potential trouble spot for the GOP is “antiterrorism” legislation. Clinton got good reviews for his vow of swift punishment (and the death penalty) for the Oklahoma bombers. Congress is rife with a new breed of Hoover Democrats–as in J. Edgar, not Herbert. Republicans will go along, and try to up the ante in some cases. But the same conservatives who worship the Second Amendment tend to like the rest of the Bill of Rights–in-eluding due process.
And what about the militant militias? So far the only candidate to take them on is the voluble Dornan. “I understand the fear these militia guys have,” he told NEWSWEEK. “But I say: ‘Go be a precinct captain instead of a fake captain running around in cammies on a soft obstacle course! Coach a Little League team! Get a life!’” Most of his rivals have maintained something dose to radio silence. The militias, their advisers say, are harmless and have little or nothing to do with the GOP. The Clintonites, these strategists declare, will overreach and advertise their political bankruptcy by harping on “dark forces” of hate. “Their whole campaign is going to be based on fear,” says GOP consultant Eddie Mahe. “They can’t think of anything else.” Maybe so. But why should next year’s campaign be different from any other?
The hard right has never seen Dole as a true believer. This time he’s trying harder to woo them, calling himself the champion of the 10th Amendment, which reserves tin-enumerated powers to the states, localities and “the people.” Dole also tries to court the right wing by stressing his disdain for the United Nations and by vowing to lead the fight to remove the assault-weapons ban.
A supporter of gun control and abortion rights, he has two strikes against him with the far right. On the plus side, in their eyes: tougher-than-thou stands on immigration, affirmative action and crime. He successfully supported Proposition 187, the anti-immigration proposal deemed too & draconian even by some conservatives; he touts his “three strikes and you’re out” law.
No one has courted the gun lobby more carefully than this Texan. He led Dole in proposing to end the assault-weapons ban. Gramm also won the early support of leaders of the Gun Owners of New Hampshire, an important group in the First Primary State. But he’s shied away from championing hard-line positions on social issues, including abortion-and pro-life activists are unhappy with him.
