FOR THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT -- A NEW STRATEGY WITHIN THE GOP

Christian political activist want the Republican Party -- and the nation -- to heed their call for one nation under god. "The go-along, get-along strategy is dead... we want a wedding ring, we want a ceremony, we want a consummation of the marriage."

coalition of 26 religious right organizations says that it will begin to "speak with one voice" in order to create an "independent political force" to seize total control of the national Republican Party, or form its own partisan movement. This marks an abrupt change in the "big tent" philosophy that has characterized the efforts of groups like Christian Coalition, which tied its fate to the success of the GOP. Indeed, for many evangelicals and fundamentalists who have labored within the ranks of the Grand Old Party, there is a growing sense of frustration and alienation, and a perception that their social and religious agenda has been "sold out" by a country club Republican elite more interested in tax cuts than in banning abortion, putting prayer back into schools, and booting gays out of the military.

    Word of this latest rift has been echoing through Washington for weeks, but in the last week major news media finally began to break the story. The Washington Post described "A gaping GOP rift" in which the "Christian right is increasingly resentful." Words like "frustrated" also found their way into headlines in the New York Times, which noted a "new tactic on the GOP" from the religious right.

   The first salvo in this ideological war, though, was reported by aanews several weeks ago in our coverage of religious "family values" guru James Dobson's address to the semi-secret Council on National Policy. The Council has served as a nexus for religious and social conservative interests; it's meetings are closed to the public. But Dobson's talk, a dress-down of the "country club conservatives" who populate the CNP ranks, was obtained by Freedom Writer, publication of the Institute for First Amendment Studies. On February 7, Dobson told a meeting of over 300 Council members in Phoenix, Arizona that Christians had been "betrayed" by the Republican Party, and that the religious right social agenda for the country had been too often sidetracked and placed on the back burner by the GOP leadership in Congress. He cited a meeting with Texas Senator Phil Gramm in 1994, where the GOP nomination contender declared "I'm not a preacher." Other traitors singled out by Dobson included Senator Bob Dole who waffled on the party's stern commitment to a ban on abortion, House Speaker Newt Gingrich who has allegedly failed to deliver important legislative items such as the Religious Freedom Amendment, and the decision to allow New Jersey Governor Christine Whitman -- a pro-choice Republican -- to address the party's 1996 National Convention.

GARY BAUER of the Washington, D.C. based Family Research Council is making tough demands on GOP leadership. He wants the Republican-dominated congress to enact a total ban on abortion, a school prayer amendment, and institute vouchers and other funding schemes for religious groups.

   In his tirade to the CNP, Dobson threatened to bolt from Republican ranks and organize an independent, third-party effort. When some critics in the audience accused him of wanting to impose a 1950s style culture, Dobson replied, "What I really want is 'Mayberry.' Don't you just love that scene when Barney uses his whole body as a weapon?"

    Dobson's organization, Focus on the Family, has over 500,000 regular contributing members, and a mailing list estimated as high as 5 million. His daily broadcasts are popular on over 1,500 Christian radio stations throughout the country where he dispenses his authoritarian, at times corn pone advice on everything from disciplining youngsters to the need to ban gays from the military.

    But if Dobson's remarks had revealed a crack in the facade of unity between Republican conservatives and the Christian right, Gary Bauer of the Washington, D.C.-based Family Research Council widened in into a spreading fault line. Bauer, who served in the Reagan White House, told the New York Times last week, "There is virtually nothing to show for an 18-year commitment," referring to the support which religious right groups have given to the GOP starting with the election of Ronald Reagan. Tom Jipping, a co- host of the "Capitol Watch" radio show on the America's Voice network, added, "What I hear these days is a huge dissatisfaction with the assumption made 20 years ago that the Republican Party was the best vehicle for achieving public policy goals."

   And there's more evidence that the fault line is getting deeper, and wider...

"NERVOUS NEWT" GINGRICH is now under the gun to cater to the Republican Party's religious extremist wing. He and other GOP leaders have gotten the warning -- "The go-along, get-along strategy is dead... we want a wedding ring, we want a ceremony, we want a consummation of the marriage."

    * Both segments within the GOP -- the "country club" social conservatives and the more rigid, religious right -- reacted strongly to a statement by Richard Land, President of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the powerful Southern Baptist Convention. Calling, in effect, for a full seduction and take over of the GOP, he declared, "The go-along, get-along strategy is dead. We want a wedding ring, we want a ceremony, we want a consummation of the marriage."

    * Call him "Nervous Newt." Hearing the blasts from Dobson, and the demands from Land, House Speaker Gingrich reportedly huddled with Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition, and the group's former Executive Director Ralph Reed. To defuse the "thunder on the right," Republican leadership has agreed to, in effect, buy off any controversy leading up to the next national elections by pushing three legislative items -- the Religious Freedom Amendment which would restore prayer in schools, tax perks and vouchers for private religious schools, and an end to public funding for the controversial National Endowment for the Arts. Vouchers seems to be dead for now, but the RFA has cleared the House Judiciary Committee, and could come up for a full vote in Congress at any time.

    * James Dobson had his own sit-downs with House Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas and other key party leaders. According to the Times, following the meeting Dobson quickly canceled a scheduled interview with that paper and the editorial board of the Washington Post, "saying that he had been persuaded to hold his fire."

    * On March 2, representatives from 26 groups met with religious conservative activist Paul Weyrich and argued for what was described as a "muscular" strategy in dealing with any compromise inside the GOP, and pressing their social agenda. Major media did not identify the participants, and some reports spoke of 25 organizations... but aanews has learned that represented at the March 2 strategy confab were operatives from Christian Coalition, Family Research Council (Bauer), Focus on the Family (Dobson), Southern Baptist Convention and the Free Congress Foundation, Traditional Values Coalition, and Eagle Forum (headed by anti-feminist maven Phyllis Schlafly.

    * Those "country club" and moderate Republicans are increasingly worried that unlike the Christian Coalition, Bauer and Dobson are potential "loose cannons," especially in political campaigns. One example is the recent California race which pitted Democrat Louise Capps, running for the seat left vacant after the death of her husband, and a solid religious right activist, Tom Bordonaro. Bordonaro managed to defeat moderate GOP opposition in the primary, in part because of an infusion of $200,000 in advertising from Gary Bauer's "Campaign for Working Families," an anti-abortion PAC. In the general election, though, Bauer's extreme positions may have backfired. One GOP analyst warned that money and advertising from such groups is often "a wildcard. It's unpredictable." And a survey done for the Republican National Committee indicated that while 70% of the California voters had seen Bauer's ads, only 19% reported that they were then more likely to vote for Bordonaro, and 24% claims that the commercials made them more favorable to Ms. Capps.

    Bauer has also denounced key GOP leaders for their statements concerning the Bordonaro race. Bordonaro was labeled an "extreme right wing candidate" by former President Gerald Ford. In Illinois, GOP Senate nominee Peter Fitzpatrick was identified as "a fringe conservative," "inflexible," and "hard right" by former Senator Bob Dole.

    The growing split between religious right groups within the GOP and the party's "country club" set (observed by pundits to be the equivalent of the Democratic Party's own stable of wealthy "limousine liberals.") may explain several developments.

    * After the meeting with Dobson, the GOP leadership began turning up the heat in a controversy which, until recently, it had assiduously avoided -- the Clinton sex scandal. House Speaker Gingrich broke the taboo of uttering "impeachment," and has begun seeking funding for an investigation. House and Senate GOP heads had, until recently, refused to comment on the White House bedroom problems. The link here with the Council for National Policy, CNP is most noteworthy. The group's political arm, CNP Action, Inc. has been distributing copies of the discredited video, "The Clinton Chronicles" since 1994 telling recipients, "As many Americans as possible should become informed about the evil which infests the Clinton Administration. Bill Clinton must be held accountable for his actions." In addition, John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute -- the "religious rights" group that had taken on the Paul Jones defense -- has been a CNP member, as is attorney Donovan Campbell, Jr, also part of the defense team.

    Another shift in GOP strategic position involved House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) who also had schmoozed with Dobson during his D.C. tour. DeLay has suddenly become the leading Republican "scourge" of the President on the Jones-sex scandal issue. DeLay reportedly told Dobson and his associates (including Bauer), "we are doing the best we can" in congress, and that running anti-abortion adds in the Capps-Bordonaro race, where 58% of the voters were identified as pro-choice, was " a strategic error."

    * How serious will House and Senate GOP leaders be taking Dobson's belligerent demands, and the call for a "marriage" with the party's extreme religious right? Despite ideological concerns, remember that Gingrich, Lott et al are professional politicians savvy enough to know the wisdom, uses and inevitability of compromise. Bauer, Dobson and more extreme groupings clustered around commentator Pat Buchanan, or Christian Reconstruction Howard Phillips of the U.S. Taypayers Party do not; for them, ideological purity often outweighs the limited benefits of working within a system.

    Even so, expect action on key social agenda items which rank at the top of the religious right's to-do list for Washington assets -- the Religious Freedom Amendment in particular.

    What about the next round of national elections? Dobson, Bauer and others in that political orbit are highly suspicious of GOP front runners like Texas Governor George W. Bush, Jr., a friend of Pat Robertson, whose campaign is reportedly getting advice from Ralph Reed. Andrea Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition -- another religious right formation within the GOP --compares Bush Jr's election to "like father like son," noting that Bush Sr. "gave us (Supreme Court) Justice Souter who turned out to be a real disaster."

    Dobson, Bauer and allies seem to be leaning toward the candidacy of Sen. John Ashcroft (R-Mo.) and -- incredibly -- a figure with true "establishment" origins, magazine publisher Steve Forbes. But Paul Weyrich remains cautious about even these possible candidates. "The question for us isn't their stand, but how great is their level of commitment."

    First Amendment activists may find it incredible that the religious far right is discontent with the Republican Party; but close examination reveals that many of the more extreme items on the Christian Coalition's dusty "Contract With the American Family" have yet to be implemented. Repeatedly, we have found evidence where individuals such as James Dobson, Gary Bauer and others speak of being "betrayed" or "used" by Republican elites. And despite vigorous efforts, a total ban on abortion, or passage of the Religious Freedom Amendment and other items seems unlikely at this time -- though not to be taken for granted. Privately, religious right leaders grumble that the best which the GOP-dominated congress has delivered is DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act which provided government consecration to the idea that marriage involved "one man and one woman." These paltry results is clearly why Dobson has threatened to "do everything in my power to tell evangelical and pro-life Christians (of the) moral and philosophical collapse of the Republican leadership."

    In addition to feeling alienated by the prosaic nature of compromise- politics, another factor which must be considered in understanding the split within GOP ranks is millennialism. The party's religious right is made up of large numbers of apocalyptic Christians who are energized, in part, by their belief that we live in an "age" that will be marked by the Second Coming. Some believe that this is linked to the year 2000 or 2001, the beginning of both a new century and a new millennium. This is a time when, according to men such as Pat Robertson, Christians must strive to "take dominion" of the earth, families and social-civic institutions in preparation for Christ's arrival and mystical events such as the Rapture and Judgment. "Dominionism" as an eschatological philosophy is often ignored or misunderstood by political secularists; it provides a powerful incentive for evangelicals and fundamentalists to organize at the local, state and national level, and energizes those enthralled in an apocalyptic belief system. Many Christian activists believe that their purpose is to purify society and pave the way for "the Kingdom."

    As these groups intensify their own struggle within the GOP and the political system at large, atheists must be more alert for attacks on state- church separation and civil liberties for non-believers and others. A recent Christian Coalition press release blasted the "atheist-homosexual lobby," for instance, and praised the California Supreme Court in its decision in favor of Boy Scouts of American discrimination against gays and nonbelievers. While the religious right has spent years vilifying "secular humanism," its rhetoric is now become sharper, and its targets more closely defined. Atheists are now at the head of the hit list.

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