DATE: Tuesday, March 4, 1997                TAG: 9703040005

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B11  EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: FRANK RICH 

DATELINE: NEW YORK                          LENGTH:   75 lines

SOME BIG DONORS REFUSE TO FINANCE CHRISTIAN CONSERVATIVE AGENDAA POST-ELECTION SURVEY FOUND THAT CHRISTIAN COALITION SUPPORT MADE VOTERS LESS LIKELY TO VOTE FOR DOLE-KEMP EVERYWHERE EXCEPT THE SOUTH.

To understand why behind-closed-door revolts against the religious right are gathering speed - and cash - at lofty levels of the Republican Party, look at a plebeian congressman like Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. No sooner had 65 million Americans embraced ``Schindler's List'' last Sunday than Coburn denounced NBC for affronting ``decent-minded individuals everywhere'' and hitting an ``all-time low'' by airing a movie with ``multiple gunshot wounds, vile language, full frontal nudity and irresponsible sexual activity.''

Coburn co-chairs the Congressional Family Caucus and is an exemplar of Christian Coalition values: He scores 100 percent on the Pat Robertson-Ralph Reed machine's voter guides. But is he anywhere near the American mainstream that decides national elections? Panicked GOP elders had to school him in the fact that nudity and violence were just plain unavoidable in the Holocaust before he retreated.

It's religious-right poster boys like Coburn who make some Republican leaders fear that their party is doomed to drive away even more women and moderates, thereby continuing its losing streak in presidential elections and risking a bicoastal congressional meltdown. A post-election survey by American Viewpoint, a GOP pollster, for the Log Cabin Republicans found that Christian Coalition support made voters dramatically less likely to vote for Dole-Kemp everywhere except the South.

When Ralph Reed once again lorded his power over the party in January - bragging to the columnist David Broder that ``Christian conservatives were decisive'' in electing James Nicholson to succeed Haley Barbour as GOP chairman - one party powerhouse got sore enough to take action. John Moran - the GOP and then Dole finance chairman in recent years - wrote a letter to 15 other Republican heavy-hitters saying that the Christian Coalition and far right had put the party ``in jeopardy.'' He proposed that big donors give to a separate organization to promote a more moderate GOP.

In an interview, Moran, a 65-year-old retired investor and a self-described ``quiet'' conservative, told me he'd rather be playing golf at home in Florida than fighting for his party. But once his letter leaked out to Dan Balz of The Washington Post, he was deluged with calls from others in the GOP ``donor base'' tired of ``raising money to support a part of the party we don't agree with.'' Two weekends ago in Palm Beach Moran spoke to an executive meeting of Team 100 - the top, six-figure GOP contributors - and found that instead of having to defend himself he was ``really well received.''

Moran says he is ``not trying to split the party.'' He will meet with Reed and be hopeful about Nicholson (``I will give him the benefit of the doubt for the time being'').

But what if the religious right's intransigent litmus tests, especially about abortion, preclude a recentering of the GOP? Won't the Christian Coalition's tough grass-roots organization trump Moran's big bucks?

``Yes, the moderates have the money and the hard right has the organization,'' says Moran, ``but you can build all kinds of organizations with money.'' Tanya Melich, the usually pessimistic author of The Republican War Against Women, says a Moran rebellion could succeed where others have failed because it involves ``white male establishment Republicans - a lot of them, not just a few - and not just Northeastern moderates but those living in areas where the party is basically strong.''

Moran's is not the only closeted post-election GOP insurgency. In Washington, 17 congressmen are organizing the Main Street Coalition - which one of its leaders, Amo Houghton, describes as a mirror image of the Democratic Leadership Council, the group instrumental in nudging the Democratic Party from the left to the Clintonian center. But Main Street is not only an effort to formulate centrist GOP policy. It is recruiting a ``star-studded cast'' of civic leaders, says Rick Lazio, the Long Island congressman, among them top businessmen ready to write checks. ``It's almost scary how easy it is to sell it,'' he adds, which may be as good a poll as any of just how much Main Street and Wall Street Republicans alike are finally willing to challenge the far right. MEMO: Mr. Rich's column is distributed by the New York Times Syndicate,

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