Post-Election Roundup (5)

A vote for Ronald Reagan and the Republicans was a vote for -- what? Last Tuesday's conservative sweep was founded on economic issues, said Eleanor Smeal, head of the National Organization for Women, and not on social ones -- namely the Equal Rights Amendment and abortion. The GOP platform flatly opposes both. Conversely, social conservatives like Jerry Falwell, fundamentalist founder of the Moral Majority, view the election as a trumpet-call for traditional American values.

Polls taken just before and after the election found most Reagan votes to be votes against an ineffectual government -- more anti-Carter than pro- Reagan -- and not a mandate for Reagan's social policies.m