A Bush defeat is unlikely to alter the GOP

WASHINGTON — Republicans don't want to talk about it, but the question is already an awful thought not so far back in their minds: What happens to the GOP if President Bush loses the election?

For starters, Karl Rove, Bush's powerful political adviser, would no longer be called a boy genius, although party insiders insist there would be less blame of him and Bush than might be expected. Assuming that the party retains control of the Senate, Republican Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee would emerge as one of the most important Republicans in the country. So would Sen. John McCain of Arizona, Bush's former nemesis. Paul Wolfowitz, the neoconservative who urged the president into war with Iraq, would not.

But on the central question of whether a loss would shift the party more to the center, Republicans say no. Yes, there would be a huge fight over Iraq. Yes, there would be bigger fault lines between the tax-cutters and deficit hawks. And yes, the party would experience a massive depression as it picked itself up from the loss. But Republicans say that a defeat of Bush would not usher in a moderate new era.

"I don't think we have to overhaul the Republican party under any circumstance," said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who is writing a book on America in the 21st century. "We have the governors of the four largest states, we have the House, we have the Senate, and the senator from Massachusetts is going to Ohio to hunt two weeks before the election. John Kerry is having to pretend to be us."

Republicans note that when their party lost in 1960, 1976 and 1992, conservatives argue that moderates — Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford and the elder George Bush — had been given their chance in the party and had lost it. But if President Bush goes down in 2004, it would be the first time that a clear conservative candidate whom Republicans had expected to win was defeated.

"Generally it causes a great soul-searching within the party," said David R. Gergen, a professor of public service at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and a veteran of the Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton White Houses. "I don't think that is going to happen. Conservatives will argue that it's not because of our conservatism that we lost. They'll look for scapegoats on the national security team. They'll say the war was a good idea, it was just poorly executed."

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld would be blamed, Gergen said, although an election victory would just as quickly make him a hero. "It's one of those things that you're only a bum if you lose," Gergen said. "Rather than blaming the ideas, they'll blame the people."