GOP Club Splits Over Vote On Anti-Abortion Platform

It hasn't been a good year to be Republican.

Like the long-standing Reagan-Bush presidential establishment, a campus Republican establishment was toppled this February when internal conflict in the Harvard-Radcliffe Republican Club resulted in several resignations and the startup of a second campus Republican organization.

The new Harvard-Radcliffe Republican Action Council (HRAC) held its first meeting on February 25, just two days after the Republican Club sparked the resignations by endorsing the anti-abortion position of the national Republican Party.

Members of both groups insist the split is not a reflection of the national division between conservatives and moderates. Instead, says N. Van Taylor '96, president of the new group, the split was caused by a basic difference in opinion about the role of campus political groups.

"Their club takes more of a campus approach, while we wanted to do more with local politics," Taylor says.

Randall A. Fine '96, first vice president of the new group, says the new group will not focus on discussion of policy issues, but on political campaigns.

"The council was founded to provide a place for students interested in Republican Party activity," Fine says. "One of our founding principles is that we don't take political stands."

But Republican Club members say the new group's goals could just as easily become part of the existing framework. "People interested in these issues could have been a subcommittee in our club," says Republican Club president Karen E. Boyle '94.

"A number of wings are represented in our club, and everyone agreed that this new organization was the most idiotic thing one could do," says Thomas E. Woods '94, Republican Club vice president.

And Republican Club members are also quick to say the division was not comparable to Republican infighting on the national stage.

"The timing might lead one to think that the abortion issue had to do with it, but I've talked to HRAC and that wasn't the reason," Boyle says.

Other members reject the comparison even more strongly.

"I think it's a little bit silly to draw such grandiose analogies to the split-off," says Christopher B. Brown '94, co-sponsor of the anti-abortion resolution. "People in the Republican Club just wanted to hold positions in their own organization."

Woods echoes Brown's view of the new club's leaders as position-seekers. "Fine was frustrated about not being elected vice-president. He struck me as a person wanting a position of power," Woods says. "The abortion issue was just the excuse for them to leave. It offered them a great boost in publicity."

But Fine denies such motives.

"I don't do things to put them on my resume," he says. "I'm not going to Law School. After I graduate I just want to go home to Kentucky."

Calling the split "a shame," Boyle said that much more could be accomplished if Republicans all worked together.