WHATEVER THE MEDIA SAY, the skirmishes at this week’s Republican platform committee meetings in San Diego leading up to the GOP national convention won’t amount to much. The real battles have already been fought in Washington, behind closed doors, with conservatives, mostly congressional staffers, squaring off against a less conservative crowd allied with the Dole campaign.

The fights in Washington — some cordial, some nasty — were over the first draft of the platform, not the final version. But the draft is of immense importance: It’s the document the delegates on the platform committee work from. They will make cosmetic changes and perhaps add language to mollify Pat Buchanan, but most of the final draft will parallel the first.