Word: gramm
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...ever voted Republican seems to be entertaining the same thought: Hey, I could beat this guy! While there is still not a single announced G.O.P. candidate, the field of likely contenders is already teeming. Some of the likeliest aren't bothering to conceal their ambitions. As Senator Phil Gramm of Texas puts it, "If I had to decide today, I would run." (Pause to indicate that he's kidding here.) "But I may come to my senses...
...opportunities attract big names. The list of would-bes, maybes and wannabes already includes former Vice President Dan Quayle, Senators Gramm and Bob Dole, ex-Cabinet members Jack Kemp, Dick Cheney, Jim Baker and Lamar Alexander and Governors Pete Wilson of California and William Weld of Massachusetts. (And maybe Pat Buchanan, the two-fisted talking head, but he's given little chance to last beyond the first primary.) Though the real campaign season won't begin until later, some of the big names were on display last weekend for one of the notable pre-season events: the Washington conference...
Mindful of the clout of a movement that has gained effective control of the Republican Party organizations in as many as 18 states, Quayle, Gramm, Cheney and Alexander all showed up to assure the assembly that they and the coalition had much in common. Though Dole was a no-show -- campaign appearances for other Republicans, he said -- his wife Elizabeth spoke for him and, before the convention, hosted a coffee for coalition state leaders. Wilson, who is pro- choice on abortion, and Baker, who may or may not be a serious contender, were pointedly not invited...
...while drawing support from the party's other two important bases, neither of which cares much about the main religious-right issues. One consists of neo-Reaganite economic conservatives more concerned with tax cuts and smaller government than with abortion and school prayer. It's in that group that Gramm and Kemp feel most at home. The other, which includes centrist Republicans of the Gerald Ford and George Bush variety, is the camp from which Dole, Cheney, Baker and Alexander all spring...
...Phil Gramm is banking on the same thing. Conservative Christians tend to see the former college economics teacher as a man more interested in marginal tax rates than the antiabortion crusade. That was the Gramm who talked to TIME a week before the convention. "I'm not going to spend my time moralizing about the problems," he said. "I'm going to spend my time changing government policy that has assaulted people's incentives to be productive." But at the convention he was the brusque, twangy Texan who knew how to play on the crowd's utter contempt for Clinton...