Keene Of The Conservatives

Political Players is a weekly conversation with the leaders, consultants, and activists who are shaping American politics. This week, CBS News' Brian Goldsmith talks with David Keene, a prominent conservative strategist for more than 30 years.

David Keene: I think in terms of its cohesiveness, it's weaker today. In terms of its infrastructure, it's as strong or stronger than it ever has been. But conservatives are divided because of the wedge that's been driven into the movement by some of those who have sort of gone along with what the Bush administration has wanted in areas where conservatives would disagree — or have sided with Congress, Republican leaders in Congress, against traditional conservatives.

CBSNews.com: Why do you think those Republican leaders disappointed you? Is it because they disagreed with your beliefs, or they just made a political calculation?

David Keene: It's primarily the latter — particularly in the Congress. Holding the line on spending, making the kinds of decisions that are required by one dedicated to a belief in small government, is tough, tough work.

And once Republicans took over in 1994 and got into office, within a couple of years they decided to play by the same rules the Democrats had played by — which is to channel money into the districts of those who they thought could better be reelected if they did that. Pretty soon they'd forgotten what it was that brought them to Washington in the first place.

The Bush administration has, in part because of the distraction of the war, allowed this to go on. And, in part, because many within the administration are not really what we would call small government conservatives. Remember, George Bush ran not as a traditional conservative but as what he called a "compassionate conservative."

And in part that meant that he wanted to use the government to achieve what his people called conservative ends. I've been to no end of meetings where his chief advisers have said, "Watch not how much we spend but how we spend it." But to the traditional conservative, how you spend it and how much you spend are both important.

CBSNews.com: You recently became involved in something called The American Freedom Agenda. Can you briefly describe what it is and how you hope to use it to influence the Republican presidential candidates?

David Keene: Our concern as traditional conservatives from the beginning of the Iraq war is that throughout American history when we've had international crises in wars and threats of that sort, people have been all too willing to trade a bit of their liberty for some security. The government's always been there to broker the deal.

So in each war we've got abuses and each war we've had people, really for the best of reasons to protect the country, reaching for more and more and more power. When those wars end, we don't get all those freedoms back. It never ratchets completely back to where it was.

The problem with the war on terrorism is it has been termed essentially an endless war. Which means we're asked to give up traditional freedoms with no endpoint in sight. So not only do we not get most of them back, we might not get any of them back.

And so we've been very concerned about holding our leaders to both fighting the war on terror on one hand and protecting the kind of society that Americans expect to live in on the other. Right after the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, then-Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said that, "If we change the way we live, if we change the structure of our society in response to all of this, the terrorists will have won." And it's our fear that we're allowing them to win by doing just that.

CBSNews.com: Turning to the 2008 presidential candidates, you publicly wondered about whether Mitt Romney is too slick and whether he changed his positions for principled reasons or for political reasons. Have you made any judgments about that?

David Keene: I have not. I don't know enough about Mitt Romney. I haven't spent enough time with him personally to really have a sense of his core values. I will say this: To some degree there's nothing wrong as you prepare for a presidential campaign and the different constituencies you're going to be approaching, to try to come up, as long as it doesn't go against your base principles, with a message and with the kinds of positions that are necessary to put together a winning coalition.

I liken the electorate a little bit to consumers. And in the consumer marketplace, of course, if you have four different kinds of dog food, for example, and none of them are selling, one of two things is going to happen. The producers of those dog foods are going to retool it, repackage it, change its makeup, the nutrition content, taste, in order to grab market share. And if they fail, a new producer of dog food is going to come onto the market and undercut them and sell their products instead.

And what we see right now on the Republican side are the producers of the dog food, so to speak, the candidates, trying to repackage each of their products to be more appealing to the consumer, which is to say the voter. If that works, one of the front-runners will emerge and win. If that doesn't work, there's gonna be a new product — a Fred Thompson or Newt Gingrich or somebody else.

CBSNews.com: Well, speaking of Fred Thompson — just by musing about a run for president, he's vaulted to second or third in the pack in some surveys. In a recent CBS News poll, only 35 percent of Republicans were satisfied with their current presidential field. Why do you think that is? And are you satisfied with the current field?

David Keene: I'm not, but as I say, the field — and the pact with the voters that each of these candidates has to make — has not yet solidified. So at the end of the day I may be satisfied with one or more of them. But right now what you've got is a field in which each of the candidates can make an appeal to the Republican conservative base, but none of them has sort of the whole package.

We did a straw poll at our recent Conservative Political Action Conference, and it was interesting: The winner was Romney but with 21 percent, which is not exactly a mandate.

But when you looked at it, you found out that those conservatives who believed in smaller government were with Romney. Those who were what we call national defense conservatives supported Giuliani. And those who were social issues conservatives voted for Brownback.

Interestingly none of those candidates have reached across into the other groups. And if you're going to put together a coalition, either of the entire electorate or of a party, which is itself a coalition, you have to have a candidate who can reach beyond his own narrow base to get support from the other coalition partners, if you will. And at this point none of these candidates has demonstrated great ability to do that.

Fred Thompson's immediate showing is a reflection of the sort of disenchantment or lack of ability of these folks right now to make that appeal.

CBSNews.com: Is there anyone not currently in the field, including Gingrich, including Thompson, that you personally would like to see jump in?

David Keene: I think the candidates that you have in the field right now, and particularly if you add Fred Thompson and Newt Gingrich, give you a pretty wide selection. And one of them is going to ultimately be able to reach into the other camps and come out of it all right.

In a sense, Republicans continue to suffer from the blaze of the Reagan persona. We measure people against Ronald Reagan, much in the way the Democrats used to measure people against Franklin Roosevelt. And in both cases we find our current candidates wanting.

CBSNews.com: What's your opinion of Fred Thompson?

David Keene: I like Fred Thompson. He was a capable senator. He is a good communicator. I disagree with him on some things, but in our ratings — I don't have the exact number in front of me, but I think during his career in the Senate he was in the mid to upper '80s, which we consider solidly conservative.

He would have had an even higher rating but for the fact that he was, at least in that stage of his career, enamored with John McCain's ideas on campaign finance reform. And we voted people who were in that position down in our ratings because we felt that there were First Amendment problems. It was messing up the system, and I think we were proven right in that regard. But except for that, and except for an occasional vote for trial lawyers, he was a pretty acceptable guy.

CBSNews.com: Is John McCain a real conservative?

David Keene: In some senses he is. You know, I told somebody the other day that while I haven't be able to really discern Sen. McCain's virtues that anybody who has former Sen. Phil Gramm as a co-chairman of his campaign must have some. Particularly on economic and spending questions, John McCain is and always has been pretty conservative.

He rates pretty high. The conservative objection to McCain is different from that. I think it stems from a couple of things. One, although John McCain would describe himself as a small government conservative, any time he takes an interest in an issue he becomes a big government conservative.

So that he wants to do everything from regulate campaign finances on the one hand to boxing on the other. And conservatives have been upset with McCain sort of flip-flopping in terms of his attitudes toward them. Over the years they have gotten a sense that he somehow doesn't like them or feel comfortable with him, and they're a little bit afraid of that.

CBSNews.com: Why do so many Republicans seem to support Giuliani over McCain when McCain agrees with them more on the important social questions?

David Keene: I think for the reasons that I just outlined. I think that McCain scares them. And they don't know about Giuliani. Also, but to be fair, Giuliani's showing in the polls is beginning to drop down, as you know.

He was being measured sort of pre-criticism. Even though the political junkies like you and me knew his record, other people didn't. And so on social issues and other things — remember he was a celebrity. He was America's mayor and all that sort of thing.

Now as he gets out there, things like Bernie Kerik and his ability to think that a candidate for police commissioner who might be mobbed up is a problem. Reminding Americans that he was not America's mayor; he was New York City's mayor.

CBSNews.com: But if he were the Republican Presidential nominee, would you support him?

David Keene: I think that if he gets the nomination he will have made peace with certain segments of the Republican coalition that he has to make peace with. He's sort of been doing the reverse of what the Democrats did with now Sen. Casey of Pennsylvania.

Sen. Casey was pro-life, and the Democratic Party is pro-choice. So Casey went to Charles Schumer, the head of the campaign committee, and said, "Yes, I'm pro-life but I'm with you on judges." And Schumer said publicly, "We all know that the only thing that counts is the judges."

Giuliani's doing the same thing. He's saying, "I'm pro-choice. But the kinds of judges I want are people like Alito and Roberts and folks like that." So if that kind of a commitment works on the Republican side the way it did on the Democratic side, he would solve some of those problems. If he does that, he could be attractive. I don't happen to think that because I think he's got a lot more problems than just that. I don't happen to think he's going to be the nominee, but I think that it is not illogical to say that there is not a way that he could be.

CBSNews.com: Speaking of the Democrats, why is Hillary Clinton, who may be the most moderate candidate right now in the Democratic field, also the most disliked among conservatives?

David Keene: Well, she became sort of a devil figure, even above and beyond her husband. During the Clinton years, a lot of conservatives thought Bill was what everybody else thought he was. But the real ideological drive in his administration from health care reform and everything else was his wife. And then with her attacks on conservatives and her allegations that there was this right-wing conspiracy against her husband. So there's no question that she is the most disliked Democratic figure, not just among conservatives, but certainly the most polarizing potential Democratic candidate that they could run.

And the average person thinks when they're going to see Hillary Clinton that they're going to get a female version of Bill, who was, after all, a very adroit and attractive politician. Instead they get a grown-up version of their third-grade teacher. I don't know about you, but I wasn't all that enamored of my third-grade teacher.

CBSNews.com: My final question: Which Democrat do you fear the most as a potential Presidential nominee? And which do you fear the least?

David Keene: Well, I'm very reluctant to get into that game simply because we've got a country that's, in spite of the last election and the one before it, relatively evenly divided. Which means that, like the NFL, any team can win on any given day. So anybody who gets either party's nomination is a serious and potentially winning candidate.

In addition to which, once you get your party's nomination you're a far different candidate than you were before you got it. People say, "Well, who are these pygmies running?" Well one of those pygmies becomes a giant the day he or she wins the nomination.

By Brian Goldsmith