Many of the moderates stayed away from the Houston convention entirely, and those who went shrank from a floor fight or oratorical combat with conservatives.

An administration official said she would speak at the Houston convention on Aug. 19, the night President Bush will be renominated.

These are Republicans who shy away from what is left of the Rockefeller wing, but cannot identify with the delegates who dominated the Houston convention.

That politics of exclusion opens an opportunity for Republicans at their Houston convention.

The Houston convention was significant in a number of ways.

In his view, it is "conventional wisdom" among Republicans that the 1992 Houston convention "was a disaster."

Some Republicans, moreover, professed to be backing away last week from the "religious war" that Patrick Buchanan proclaimed at the Houston convention.

The roots of fear - religious, sexual, social - seem to lie deep in American life and particularly among the so-called conservatives who dominated the Houston convention.

If you wonder why Americans have become so cynical about politics, take a close look at George Bush's acceptance speech at the Houston convention.

Intent on erasing the bad memories from the Houston convention and the November election, the Republican Party met here in search of its identity.