There was more agonizing on the Right over Colin Powell. Pat Buchanan warned of party split if Powell won nomination: “I think you’d have right- to-life parties sprouting all over the country. You’d have Christian Coalition folks breaking loose.” . . . American Conservative Union gathered 11 conservative activists to denounce Powell at Washington press conference. Said ACU chairman David Keene, a Dole backer, there’s no reason “why any conservative would want to sacrifice the work of decades on the altar of political celebrity.” Supply-sider Jeffrey Bell argued party split would make a Powell “general-election candidacy a surprisingly weak one.” Missing from conference was Christian Coalition executive director Ralph Reed, who nonetheless had sharpened criticisms of Powell in recent weeks. “It’s going to be very difficult,” Reed said, “for him to win the support of those [pro-family voters], if not impossible.” . . . Bill Bennett retorted: “There is a conservative establishment too, which is frankly going a little bonkers right now because the grass-roots, the individuals, people who actually vote happen to like Colin Powell.” . . . Wall Street Journal poll found 28 per cent of self-identified conservatives supporting Powell, 41 per cent Dole. . . . Arianna Huffington, got into a nasty spat with Dole campaign over her criticisms of Senate Majority Leader; she accuses Dole camp of attempting to blackmail her into silence. . . . Dole maintains a Powell run in GOP primaries would send conservatives his way: “You can’t have three or four horses in the race when you’ve got somebody else jumping in. My view is that would be helpful to me.” . . . Polls showed Powell getting 33 per cent support in New Hampshire primary, with Dole at 18 and all other candidates at 5 or less.
Marjorie Margolies Mezvinsky— generally considered to have lost Pennsylvania congressional seat over her vote for Clinton 1993 budget—reacting to President’s mea culpa concerning his first two years in office: “Oh, my.” . . . Clinton’s backpedaling from his mea culpa, followed by statement, later denied, to columnist Ben Wattenberg that he had “changed philosophically and missed the boat” during first two years of Presidency, are dispiriting to Hill Democrats, already feeling tension with White House over 1996 election strategy. “What he said last week is not the problem. It’s what he might say this week. We have a hard time trusting him,” says one congressional Democrat. . . . According to New York Times, White House consultant and sometime Republican Dick Morris “openly and forcefully” ridiculed Clinton while advising Republican candidates in 1994. Quips Charles Krauthammer: “In Morris, Clinton has found the only man in America with fewer principles than he has.”
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