Laws of Nature Transcend GOP Ties for Beach Boys : Politics: Group, which will perform in Costa Mesa, parts ways with Bush on environment.

Forget California’s 9.8% unemployment rate; the real crisis facing Republican strategists is this: Can they take California without the Beach Boys?

That’s right--Nancy Reagan’s favorite rock group has abandoned the Grand Old Party.

The reason, said Beach Boys front man Mike Love, is as clear as the water in Santa Monica Bay.

“We like George Bush as a person and have supported him in the past, but on the environment, we have to part ways,” Love said.

The Beach Boys, who perform tonight at the Pacific Amphitheatre in Costa Mesa, speak with some authority on the topic, bikinis and the ozone layer being inextricably linked. “And now we’re seeing that the very lifestyle we’ve sung about for 30 years is in danger,” Love said.

He said he has particularly bad vibrations toward Dan Quayle, especially since the vice president attacked his Democratic rival, Tennessee Sen. Al Gore, for writing the environmental book “Earth in the Balance.”

Quayle’s “remarks were just so insulting to anyone and everyone who has an appreciation for nature and life and the environment,” Love said. “Besides, since when does a guy who can’t spell potato all of a sudden start doing book reviews?”

Love, in a telephone interview from Washington, went on to list a range of issues where the Beach Boys’ concerns split from those of the Bush-Quayle ticket, from neglect of the “inner-city urban environment” to an overreliance on a “war-based economy” to the political influence of a “hypocritical” Religious Right.

But despite Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton’s well-known musical talents, the Beach Boys’ defection from GOP ranks isn’t necessarily good news for the Democrats--who, after all, haven’t won California since “Fun, Fun, Fun” topped the pop charts in 1964.

Love, following the lead of former Beatle George Harrison, has declared himself in favor of the Natural Law Party, the five-month-old political venture organized by followers of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

The party uses the term “natural law” not to refer to the Enlightenment philosophies that found their way into last year’s confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, but rather to the maharishi’s metaphysical ideas--less Rousseau and Kant than aroma therapy and yogic flying.

Unlike the Republicans and Democrats, the Natural Law Party has a simple solution for all of the world’s problems: transcendental meditation. The practice, popularized after the Beatles--and the Beach Boys--visited the maharishi in 1967, involves the repetition of a mantra, or chant, to reduce mental activity and stress.

True, the party’s platform has some planks that fall within the conventional political spectrum--specifically those that call for a tax cut, support abortion rights, oppose nuclear energy and propose the conversion of military industries to civilian use.

But the party’s central plank is more unusual, apparently following a 412-page plan the maharishi’s supporters submitted--unsolicited--to Bush two years ago. For a mere $1 billion, the plan proposed, the federal government could employ 8,000 meditators, whose combined efforts would generate an aura so positive it would lead to huge reductions in crime, disease and other social ills.

The result, known as “super radiance,” or the Maharishi Effect, would save $135 billion worth of public services--at least according to the professors at Maharishi International University in Fairfield, Iowa, who devised the program.

Despite the favorable results reported by some who practice TM, however, the movement’s constant description of its techniques as “scientifically proven” raised the ire of the American Medical Assn., which in October published a withering attack in its journal on TM’s methods of claiming scientific legitimacy.

According to the journal report, TM advocates--who often fail to disclose their financial interests in selling the movement’s expensive therapies and techniques--have misled the public by claiming or implying that their methods are endorsed by prestigious universities and research institutes.

TM advocates said some of the instances cited by the journal were oversights or misunderstandings.

While the maharishi’s super radiance plan didn’t find its way into White House budget proposals, NLP spokesman Bill Crist says the party has raised $600,000 for its campaign and has qualified for $250,000 in federal matching funds.

Those coffers may be further enriched after tonight’s Beach Boys concert, which will feature a private reception for donors to the Natural Law Party and its presidential candidate, John Hagelin, a professor at the Maharishi college.

But it is unclear whether the support of 1960s rock stars can turn the tide for the Natural Law Party.

In April, Harrison staged a fund-raising concert for the party’s British branch--attended by Love and fellow Beach Boys Al Jardine and Bruce Johnston--at London’s Royal Albert Hall. Although the show marked Harrison’s first British concert in 23 years and received international coverage, the party failed to win a single parliamentary seat.

That poor showing doesn’t discourage Love, whose latest song, “Summer in Paradise,” includes the hopeful lyric, “I looked into the future and what I saw / Was a world in harmony with natural law.”

The maharishi’s theories, some of which aim to reverse the aging process, “would be a tremendous boon to mankind, and I hope they get into the political process sooner rather than later,” said Love, 51.

But if opinion polls hold, and ’92 isn’t the year of the Natural Law Party, Love might not be too disappointed on Nov. 4.

“I really tend to admire and support Al Gore,” Love confessed--no disrespect intended for Mike Tompkins, the Natural Law Party’s vice presidential candidate.

Love met with the Tennessee senator at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro earlier this year. “He was a great choice by Bill Clinton, because he has a heartfelt desire to keep the planet from self-destructing,” Love said.

Love has also been one of few rock figures to support another cause championed by the Gore family: the campaign by the senator’s wife, Tipper Gore, to require that controversial records bear warning labels--a subject not addressed in the Natural Law Party’s position paper.

The Beach Boys and Dave Mason play at 6 p.m. at the Pacific Amphitheatre, 100 Fair Drive, Costa Mesa. $13.50 to $27.50. (714) 546-4876.