THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, September 16, 1996 TAG: 9609160043
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Decision '96
SOURCE: BY GUSTAV NIEBUHR, THE NEW YORK TIMES
LENGTH: 121 lines
Minutes after Republican vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp spoke to the Christian Coalition this weekend in Washington, and just before Bob Dole made a surprise appearance there, the organization's founder, Pat Robertson, met him backstage and asked that Kemp carry a request to Dole.
``I said, `Jack, you had a wonderfully balanced message today,' '' Robertson said Saturday. `` `Please encourage Bob to balance the economic message with the family and moral issues.' ''
Dole has been campaigning largely on a promise to cut income taxes by 15 percent. But Robertson said that if Dole delivered a ``clear-cut moral and social message,'' the Republican nominee could cut into President Clinton's considerable lead, energizing religious conservatives, who turned out in large numbers in 1994 to help elect the first Republican-majority Congress since the 1950s.
But those elections two years ago have left Robertson's Chesapeake-based coalition, which had gathered for its annual convention, faced with a paradox created by its own success.
Once the aggressive insurgent, the organization is now playing a more defensive game, an unfamiliar role, as it works to rally voters' support for a members of Congress who are sympathetic to the coalition's agenda of opposing abortion, supporting school vouchers and backing some form of school prayer.
The coalition, which reports a membership of 1.8 million, also approaches this task at a time when the national mood has shifted and the electorate has voiced less anger at Washington and even seems to have warmed to Clinton, just as it has cooled to the idea of change.
Robertson, best known as founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network, said he had not abandoned hope for Dole's presidential campaign, adding that he believes in miracles. But he also spoke with concern about how the election, shadowed by Clinton's lead in the polls, could affect the balance of power in Congress.
``We have to fight through and mobilize the people, because of the congressional races,'' Robertson said. ``There has to be Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay and Dick Armey, and Trent Lott and Don Nickles,'' he said, naming the House speaker, majority whip and majority leader, respectively, as well as the Senate majority leader and majority whip.
``If there's a Democratic Congress, Clinton will swing back to his traditional self,'' Robertson warned. ``It will be devastating.''
Just as religious conservatives, a label that crosses many sectarian lines, have never been a monolithic force, so even at the coalition's ``Road to Victory'' convention in Washington, a certain tension was evident among the few thousand delegates there Friday and Saturday.
Coalition members included those who would pin their hopes on veteran politicians like Dole, who maintains a broad economic, foreign policy and social agenda, and those who would favor politicians committed to keeping moral issues front and center, especially opposition to abortion.
Alan Keyes, a former State Department official who sought the 1996 Republican presidential nomination, spoke for the latter position, when he warned the coalition Saturday not to count on ``15 percent tax cuts, and a tax cut for the middle class,'' references, respectively, to Dole's promise and a former pledge of Clinton's.
Calling on religious conservatives to ``cling to principle'' and trust in God, Keyes received a standing ovation and shouts of ``hallelujah!''
Later, Jerry Howd, the chairman of the coalition's chapter in Medina County, Ohio, said he wished that Dole sounded more like Keyes. Howd said Dole seemed to fear the ``moderate middle,'' a group that ``feels moral issues are taboo.'' Yet Howd said he would certainly vote for Dole, whom he called ``a good, honest and decent man.''
Told of this, Robertson said: ``Remember, the Christian Coalition are hard-core activists. There is no way they are going to leave this meeting and vote for Bill Clinton.''
But, he said, that was not necessarily true of all ``people who are identified as born-again, or just evangelical church members, or conservative Roman Catholics.''
``They have to hear more,'' Robertson continued, ``and they have to be persuaded that there's a moral dimension in the Dole program that will satisfy what they consider to be their full needs.''
A year ago, he called Dole a ``lifelong conservative.'' In the interview Saturday, Robertson went further, saying: ``In my opinion, he's going to be the most conservative president we've had in a long time. Even more conservative than Ronald Reagan - assuming he gets elected.''
He credited Dole with having ``probably the most pro-life voting record of anybody in Congress.'' But Robertson said Dole might not know that many people, including religious conservatives, were not aware of his votes because they did not study the Congressional Record.
Dole has made little mention of abortion in his campaign. In a brief speech to the coalition Saturday, he began by repeating his tax cut pledge. But before closing, he promised that if elected he would sign a bill that Clinton had vetoed last spring, to bar a rarely used late-term-abortion procedure. His audience responded with the most prolonged applause of the speech.
Earlier, and with little elaboration, Dole turned to the Bible, quoting Proverbs 3:5-6, which begins: ``Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight.''
Speaking afterward, Kemp put the verses in personal context, saying that he, Dole and their wives met in Dole's hometown, Russell, Kan., before going to the Republican convention in San Diego, and recited the passage as they knelt in prayer, holding hands.
But among some coalition members, Bible verses and even public pronouncements against abortion carry less weight if they are perceived to be offered on the margins of a candidate's concerns.
Tom McMillin, the coalition's Michigan field director, said he did not want candidates ``to talk about moral issues, unless it's from their heart.'' But McMillin said a tax cut carried a positive social message, implying support for family life and volunteerism. If one like Dole's were enacted, he said, ``we can spend more time with our kids,'' rather than working to pay bills.
Another coalition member, Andreas Ringl, the chairman of the organization's chapter in Cumberland County, N.C., said he had heard too much emphasis on fiscal matters from elected officials, right down to his local school board.
``The very moral fabric that has built this nation,'' Ringl said, ``has been filtered out'' of the political discourse. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
Pat Robertson said Bob Dole could cut Clinton's lead if he
strengthened his opposition to abortion. Robertson is concerned
about the effect Clinton's lead, and a Democratic Congress, could
have: ``Clinton will swing back to his traditional self.''
KEYWORDS: CHRISTIAN COALITION PRSIDENTIAL RACE CANDIDATE
PAT ROBERTSON by CNB