REPUBLICANS NOW HEAD OUT IN SEARCH OF A NEW RELIGION

The greatest international event in 50 years the fall of Communism came on his watch. For President George Bush, it was an unparalleled moment of glory. For politician George Bush, it in a completely bizarre way was probably the beginning of the end of his political career.

For half a century, anti-Communism was the bedrock of American foreign policy. Both political parties although in different ways signed on to the cause. Opposition to Marxism was for Democrats a pragmatic dogma based on realpolitik. For Republicans it was a religious creed that defined the essence of the party. For Democrats, a big defense budget was the awkward consequence of uncertain times. For Republicans, a gargantuan defense budget was an article of faith and an act of compliance with God's unwritten commandment to eradicate the Communist scourge.

When the Berlin Wall fell, the Republicans lost their one unifying credo. When Russia metamorphosed from feared menace to friendly supplicant, Republican fervor had to turn homeward and to George Bush's domestic vision. He didn't have one. He had bits and pieces things like elimination of the capital gains tax, setting a line-item veto, and allowing school vouchers and prayer in the classroom. But bush could never weave these scraps into a tapestry of who he was and where he would lead the nation.

When the Berlin Wall fell, the ideological fissures within the Republican party began to widen. There are economic Republicans, religious-right Republicans, internationalist Republicans, moderate Republicans, Eastern Republicans, Southern Republicans and more. ONce they all were anti-Communists first an something else second; now all are several something else first and anti-Communism is irrelevant. The Republican big tent became a collection of smaller tents scattered further and further apart on the campground.

For a short while, the Gulf War brought everyone in America together. Bush, with great skill, assembled an alliance and vigorously carried out the job of Commander in Chief. The political after flow was surprisingly brief just as it was for Winston Churchill when he led his nation to victory in World War II only to be dumped before the guns were silent in the Pacific.

Then economy deteriorated. Although he had been in and around national politics most of his adult life, Bush had no innate sense of the internal functioning of America. In philosophical terms, he had never found himself in relationship to the issues of our time or to the people he governed.

A visionless administration held an ugly, mean spirited political convention in Houston. The anti-Communist crusade that had been the Republican catechism for half a century was replaced by the Pat Buchanan - Pat Robertson - Marilyn Quayle religious war over "family values." It was a convention designed to substitute a new theology for a vanished one. Trouble was the new religion had only a narrow, divisive appeal.

Even as George Bush made his closing statement in Debate II, he threw himself back into familiar Cold War rhetoric. If this were 1988, his remarks would have been timely and would have most likely persuaded the American people. But this is 1992 and the unifying political faith of yesteryear has disappeared.