WASHINGTON -- First daughter Maureen Reagan was elected co-chairman of the Republican Party Friday despite the reservations of conservatives who don't like her disagreements with her father on some women's issues.
Some party regulars said the No. 2 job should have gone to a woman who has worked longer in the party. Conservatives dislike the fact she supports ERA and comparable-worth pay for women -- positions President Reagan opposes.
But those who have grumbled behind the scenes in the past kept silent in the public meeting and her election was unanimous.
Maureen Reagan's election, and the re-election of party chairman Frank Fahrenkopf to a third term came at the RNC's winter meeting. The committee was also expected to ratify the decision to hold the party's 1988 presidential convention in New Orleans.
After her election to the No. 2 party post, Maureen Reagan said she wants to attract more young poeple to the GOP 'to leave our mark on this party and the American political process well into the next decade.'
'There hasn't been any controversy,' Maureen Reagan said commenting on her father's request that she get the No. 2 party job. 'There was one person against me (on the RNC) and he voted yes.'
Answering her critics in the past, Maureen Reagan said she has been a Republican longer than her father and has worked seven days a week and campaigned in all 50 states since becoming a consultant to the RNC following her father's election.
Senate Republican leader Robert Dole was the only GOP presidential aspirant to address the meeting and he told the party faithful he's watching the Democrats who took over control of the Senate this year.
'We're going to be keepinmg score in the Senate of the United States,' Dole said 'We're going to keep a balanace sheet. We're going to add up all that in 1987 and 1988 ... someone's going to know what happened,' under Democratic control.
In his opening speech to the committee, Fahrenkopf urged both conservative and moderate members of the GOP to join together as they move into the 1988 election without the Reagan 'security blanket.'
Fahrenkopf urged Republicans to 'condemn campaigns of negativism.'
'We should encourage open debates on critical issues,' he said, 'But we must condemn gratuitous comments on loyalty.'
Fahrenkopf did not mention any particular conflict specifically, but attempted to head off future infighting in the post-Reagan era.
'In some ways, we have become a little like Linus in the 'Peanuts' cartoon strip, clutching the mantle of President Reagan's leadership like a security blanket,' he said.
He called for the party to let go of the blanket and 'argue creatively, not destructively.'
The party was also to ratify the choice of New Orleans as its 1988 convention site.
Fahrenkopf, attempting to brush off the loss of leadership in the Senate, chose to compare the current state of the Republican Party to that of the Democrats during the time of Franklin Roosevelt.
Fahrenkopf said Republicans are still pushing 'philosophical re-alignment,' noting that despite the loss of Senate seats during Roosevelt's day, the Democrats remained a strong majority.
'Roosevelt's critics and the political pundits of 1938 all sold short the revolution that Roosevelt had spawned,' Fahrenkopf said. 'Today, their modern-day counterparts are making the same mistake. The Reagan Revolution is not at an end. It has only just begun.'
