Republican National Convention

Never mind the ugly iron fence. Never mind the long exhaust-scented waits to get across the border into the United States. And never mind the huge "Welcome Bill" billboard left over from some other politician's visit to the region. Tijuana is trying in its own way to capitalize on the massive influx of upscale migrant workers into San Diego this week. They are journalists, you see, and they just keep coming and coming and coming.

The story here in San Diego is the fever pitch of construction. --CNN anchor Donna Kelly, overlooking the unfinished podium inside the Republican convention hall Friday * Today's start of the televised Republican National Coronation of Bob Dole is a signal for nostalgia-niks to chew on the past.

Will this month's political gatherings in San Diego and Chicago be remembered as the last of the four-day conventions? Network television executives, pointing to poor ratings, are lobbying for more compact proceedings. But host cities, who pour millions of dollars to gear up for the conventions but then expect them to generate even more in business, can be expected to resist such a move. Here is a look at how U.S.

Talk about family comes as readily to politicians as wind to Chicago and sun to San Diego. Democrats who gathered this week in Chicago, like their Republican counterparts who met earlier in San Diego, know that as the campaign unfolds, President Clinton and his GOP challenger, Bob Dole, will present dueling economic visions, wrapped in the warm and emotionally charged rhetoric of family values.

With Gov. Pete Wilson a lame duck with a diminished political star, a new generation of Republican leaders has emerged in California, led by state Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren and San Diego Mayor Susan Golding. Lungren, 49, came out of this month's Republican National Convention with an enhanced image as a national political comer and the GOP heir apparent to Wilson, who cannot seek reelection because of term limits and who now says he will not run for the U.S. Senate in 1998.

Gov. Pete Wilson and other leaders of the Republican Party's moderate wing appealed Tuesday to Bob Dole to find a way to soften the party position on abortion and warned of a potentially divisive floor fight at next week's nominating convention if he fails to do so. Wilson flew here for a press conference in which he declared that "nobody who is pro-choice is urging that we have a floor fight. To the contrary they are against a floor fight." "But unhappily that may be the only option."

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Republicans disparaged Democrats as little more than a collection of interest groups more committed to advancing their own goals than the party's electoral prospects. But as they battle over the party platform in San Diego, Republicans are finding themselves in a similarly uncomfortable position.

With the Republican National Convention beginning here on Monday, downtown is aflutter--with red, white and blue welcome banners, huge inflatable elephants bobbing from hotel balconies and a palpable sense of anticipation, for the commercial as much as the political event. Restaurants in the heart of the historic Gaslamp Quarter, soon to be besieged with delegates and media, are advertising convention specials like "Elephant Stew."

The Republican Party is a moving target. Less than two years ago, the party appeared firmly under the guidance of a coterie of conservatives whose ardor burned hotter than even that of Ronald Reagan. Its ideas and ideology, the direction of its march and the underlying philosophy guiding it were clear. But the backlash that greeted the Republican-led Congress has clouded that vision. And now, as the party heads into the general election campaign, its course is much less clear.

Here in "California's Heartland," the Republican National Convention got lousy television ratings but good reviews, with nominees Bob Dole and Jack Kemp making serious strides in their not-so-subtle seduction of undecided moderate voters. Janna Rigby, an independent who voted for Ross Perot in 1992, found herself falling for the GOP ticket as she watched the candidates' speeches Thursday night with her Republican father and Democrat sister.