HILADELPHIA - They heard just one glancing attack on abortion, and none at all on gay rights, or affirmative action. They never had a chance to cheer their impeachment champion, Representative Henry Hyde of Illinois. Yet most conservatives left the Republican National Convention yesterday smiling.
The four-day meeting was full of talk about traditionally Democratic themes such as better schools and Social Security reform, but bedrock conservatives feel their nominee, Texas Governor George W. Bush, and his running mate, Dick Cheney, will be true to their cause.
''This is a very solidly conservative platform. Delegates are overwhelmingly conservative and Reagan Republicans,'' said Gary Bauer, the conservative commentator and former GOP presidential candidate.
''I think there's a little bit of political strategy: Bush has put together, for now, the Reagan coalition, and so he's trying for a couple of voting groups that are part of [Vice President Al] Gore's base, but this is going to be a fairly clear-choice election between a profamily, prolife conservative and a liberal Democrat,'' Bauer said.
The sentiment, while widespread, was not universal.
Willam Safire, a conservative columnist for The New York Times, wrote yesterday that in avoiding controversial positions, Republicans sapped vitality from the political process.
''What is politics without the clash of ideas?'' he wrote. ''What's the use of a great political showcase without a partisan show?''
William Kristol, co-authoring an editorial in ''The Weekly Standard,'' a conservative magazine, complained that the party's impeachment warriors like Hyde should have been saluted.
Kristol and David Tell wrote: ''Bush needn't dwell on impeachment, but he ought to address it. Not so much to defend the honor of his party (though it would be nice if he introduced Henry Hyde to a standing ovation), but to define, as nothing else could, the presidency he hopes to give us.''
Representative Bob Barr of Georgia was an impeachment manager under Hyde on the House Judiciary Committee. During a break in a radio show, he said yesterday that the convention was neither the time nor the place to air congressional gripes.
''All I can say is I feel very, very comfortable with George W. Bush as a conservative,'' Barr said. ''I believe he is conservative. He believes in those sort of mainstream issues that are important to my constituents and me as conservatives, so I'm not worried.''
The congressman said Bush's decision to pick Cheney as his running mate was also reassuring.
''It helps in two regards. One, in terms of the substance of the man, he couldn't have picked somebody with more substance and credibility. Secondly, he has picked somebody who is a mainstream conservative, so I think it sends a very tangible signal,'' Barr said.
While conservative rhetoric may have been absent from the convention hall, it permeated the platform adopted last weekend. The party maintained the 1996 plank flatly opposing abortion even though Bush would allow exceptions in cases when a woman was raped, victimized by incest, or risked her life by continuing a pregnancy.
Governor Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin, chairman of this year's platform committee, said Bush and conservatives were able to strike a balance.
''The Republicans have their voice in articulating the platform. The candidates then come in and put their own philosophical views into play, and we are trying to make sure that we are not as contentious and as harsh as the '96 platform was, and we're trying to articulate this new vision for Republicans across America,'' he said.
Those outside the party took a different message from the lack of conservative distress at the short-shrifting of their causes and heroes on the convention floor. Joe Andrew, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said it showed that the convention was nothing more than a charade.
''If conservatives did not think this was a show, that this somehow was really a rebirth of the Republican Party into the Democratic Party, conservatives would stand up and rebel and make their views known,'' Andrew said. ''But they believe this is just show business, it's not real, this isn't the real Republican Party anyway, so don't worry about it.''
