Influence of religious right may hurt GOP

By Cokie Roberts and Steven V. Roberts - Newspaper Enterprise Assn.
Friday, October 27, 2006 - Web Link
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October 27, 2006

FOR a generation, conservative Democrats have been joining the Republicans and blaming their leaders for swinging too far to the left on issues like gun control and taxes. "I didn't leave my party," explained the defectors, "my party left me."

In this election cycle, two kinds of Republicans -moderates and libertarians - are starting to feel the same way. Their common complaint: the religious right has captured their party and imposed a radical agenda on issues like gay marriage and stem cell research.

In Kansas, a former chairman of the state GOP, John Parkinson, joined the Democrats to run for lieutenant governor. "I'd reached a breaking point," Parkinson told Peter Slevin of The Washington Post. "I want to work on relevant issues and not on a lot of things that don't matter." Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sibelius, who recruited Parkinson and other dissidents, added: "These are people who felt banished."

During the Bush era, Republicans have followed a clear and winning strategy: mobilize the conservative base and divide the electorate using emotional issues and incendiary charges. And they're doing it again, inviting dozens of conservative talk radio hosts to the

White House to interview top-rank officials. But this time around, the Republican strategy could backfire and hand the election to the Democrats.

Ten percent of all Republicans tell the Washington Post/ABC poll they'll vote Democratic. The Pew Research Center finds "extremely weak" partisan ties among moderate and liberal Republicans, with only

37 percent caring whether their party controls Congress.

The Cato Institute says libertarian support for President Bush dropped from 72 percent in 2000 to 59 percent two years ago and continues to slide.

What's happening? Moderate Republicans are clustered in the Northeast and generally combine conservative fiscal views with progressive social attitudes. As the center of gravity in the GOP has shifted to the south and the right, these voters have felt increasingly alienated and isolated. Some moderate lawmakers have even been denounced as "RINOs" (Republicans In Name Only) by party purists and targeted for extinction.

Conservatives tried (unsuccessfully) to purge two progressive senators, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, by running hard-right candidates against them in the primaries. But now Chafee could lose in the fall, as could a clutch of moderate House Republicans in Connecticut, Pennsylvania and New York.

According to Pew, 46 percent of progressive Republicans feel evangelical Christians (or "theo-conservatives") have "gone too far in imposing their religious values."

Former Missouri Sen. Jack Danforth, an ordained minister and loyal Republican, reflects this resentment in his recent book, "Faith and Politics" (Viking Adult).

"The base of our party now is the Christian conservatives," he says. "The Republican Party has done everything it can to appeal to that base ... I think this is bad for the country and bad for the Republican Party because I think when the American people reflect on this, they do not want a sectarian party in this country."

Libertarians, who are most powerful in the Mountain West, favor small government and individual freedom, and they resent the religiously inspired and often Southern-based conservatives who think government should impose moral values on everybody else.

The issue that epitomizes their anger: a move by Republican leaders last year to dictate the fate of TerriSchiavo, the Florida woman suffering from irreversible brain damage.

In his book "The Elephant in the Room," (Wiley) author Ryan Sager quotes Dick Armey, the former Republican leader in the House: "Where in the hell did this Terri

Schiavo thing come from? There's not a conservative, Constitution-loving, separation-of-powers guy alive in the world that could have wanted that bill on the floor."

The reason, says Armey, was "pure blatant pandering to James Dobson," a major figure on the religious right through his popular radio program, Focus on the Family. The bill, Armey adds, was "silly, stupid and irresponsible," but GOP leaders caved in "because Dobson and his gang of thugs are real nasty bullies."

With the help of unhappy libertarians, Democrats won a Senate seat in Colorado two years ago and could take another one in Montana this year. Democrats control the governorships in Montana, Wyoming, Arizona and New Mexico and could win the state house in Colorado. In Idaho, a Republican House candidate, Bill Sali, created
an uproar by suggesting that abortion causes breast cancer. A Republican legislative leader called Sali "an absolute idiot."

If Republicans lose this year, look at the moderates and libertarians in their own ranks who are saying: "I didn't leave my party. My party left me."