Dole Flips, Flops and Irks : The controversy over gay group’s contribution should have been avoided

Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) says that his campaign erred when it rejected a donation from a group of gay Republicans. But if the Senate majority leader and presidential candidate is looking for kudos, his halfhearted mea culpa isn’t likely to produce that result.

Despite his earlier defense of the rejection, Dole this week said that it was a mistake for campaign aides to have returned $1,000 last August to the Log Cabin Republicans, a group that by all accounts is politically mainstream. “I think if they [the aides] had consulted me, they wouldn’t have done that,” a conciliatory Dole said Tuesday. “I just didn’t agree with what happened.”

That version of events just doesn’t square with Dole’s past statements. Last month when he had an opportunity to set the record straight on national television, he defended his campaign’s action: “What I didn’t want was the perception that we were buying into some special rights for any group, whether with . . . gays or anyone else.”

Many suspect that the campaign’s return of the gift and Dole’s subsequent defense of the step was a calculated play to the far right. Some pointed to the timing--one week after Dole tied conservative Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.), a rival for the GOP nomination, in an Iowa presidential straw poll in which the Kansan had been heavily favored.

Now, with Gramm having some fund-raising problems, maybe Dole feels he doesn’t have to worry about any connection with a gay political group. Certainly such a link would not be high on lists of concerns for most Americans.

This whole business has caused nothing but trouble for the Dole campaign. These events will win Dole no support from the homosexual community, which justifiably was hurt by the candidate’s insensitivity. They will win no support from those on the right who had applauded his rejection of the contribution. And surely they will generate no surge of approval from the majority of Americans, who are smart enough to recognize a textbook case of flip-flop politics when they see one.