THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, February 7, 1997 TAG: 9702080022
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A15 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Sandy Grady
LENGTH: 99 lines
WASHINGTON
If you live long enough, you'll see strange things. But it's still a dazzling - and maybe transient - miracle when you see the Republican party cozying up to racial minorities.
What's next, the Ku Klux Klan opening a free soup kitchen in the South Bronx? David Duke holding a pep rally in Harlem? Face it, Republicans are stereotyped as white country-clubbers who won elections with racial code words, some subtle as brass knucks.
I mean, this is the party of Richard Nixon's ``Southern Strategy'' devised to lure George Wallace fans. The party of Willie Horton TV ads. The party whose Sen. Jesse Helms keeps winning by drumming on ancient prejudices.
When their '96 VP candidate Jack Kemp made the novel experiment of campaigning in black communities, Republican hard-liners howled: Get back where you belong, Jack. Maybe they've belatedly discovered that Bob Dole, no surprise, drew only 12 percent of the black vote.
Maybe they're stealing thunder from Bill Clinton. His inaugural rhetoric - ``the divide of race has been America's constant curse'' - came naturally from Clinton, for whom racial healing is an emotional touchstone.
Maybe Republicans noticed the demigods of America's youth are Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan. And Gen. Colin Powell rides atop polls as their best 2000 contender. Time to board the glory train?
Oh, well, let's not scoff at transformation and penitence - Republicans deserve the tinny applause as much as any sinner on Oprah or Sally Jessy.
Their new symbolism would blossom at the State of the Union speech. Rep. Newt Gingrich, desperate for a fresh image, invited Rev. Jesse Jackson as his guest in the gallery with Mrs. Newt.
If Jackson could rehabilitate Dennis Rodman, rehabbing Newt should be a breeze. More dramatically, Republicans tapped Rep. J.C. Watts, the charismatic ex-Oklahoma University quarterback, to make the televised response to Clinton's speech. They're proud he's the first African American awarded this slot.
Watts insists he wasn't given the job of answering Clinton because he's black, but to ``provide a fresh voice.'' It was a cinch he'd improve on Dole's snoring flop last year.
Hitting hard with plain words, exuding an athlete's intensity, the 39-year-old Watts is a comer. He lit up the '96 GOP convention. We may be watching the embryo of a national career.
But that's not the most stunning symbolism as Republicans try to shake their stodgy image: ``Whites only need apply.''
No, the shocker came from the Christian Coalition, Pat Robertson's band of 1.7 million white, churchgoing conservatives. Fiercely against abortion and gay rights, its Bible-thumping politics make it King Kong of Republican grass roots.
Now - hold the choir music - director Ralph Reed says the Christian Coalition has a change of heart. Like Saul on the road to Damascus, it has seen the light. It will shift its red-hot zeal from white suburbanites to poor blacks and Latinos.
Blazing candor, Reed said: ``For too long, our movement has been predominantly - frankly, almost exclusively - a white, evangelical, Republican movement whose political center of gravity has centered in safety of the suburbs.''
One awed black minister, the Rev. Lawrence Haygood, of Tuskegee, Ala., proclaimed Reed a new messiah - ``a leader in white form.''
Fine, but what does miracle-worker Reed have in mind? Well, his so-called ``Samaritan Project'' would recruit Christian Coalition families to live in poor urban areas. ``We'd have people working in homeless shelters, hospitals, teaching literacy,'' he says.
Uh-oh, Reed's critics saw him demeaning blacks with Bible-toting saviors from the Colonial past. The NAACP's Harold McDougald fumed, ``Missionaries come to preach an agenda.''
Reed's plan (eventual cost, $3 billion) would have Congress pay for kids in the 100 poorest school districts to switch to private (Christian?) schools. Hmmm, sounds like the old voucher system to switch dough from public schools. No wonder there's skepticism.
``They want to use gestures and money to fit their right-wing agenda,'' said Jesse Jackson, incensed at the Christian Coalition's ``contempt and arrogance'' for not consulting black leaders. Meaning the Rev. Mr. Jesse.
Reed insists he's sincere, inspired by ``hugging and praying'' when the Christian Coalition responded to church burnings. ``We saw fellow believers in trouble.''
But you also see the Christian Coalition in trouble: a Federal Election Commission suit charging it improperly crossed state-church lines by boosting Republican candidates. Is this ``New Samaritan'' ploy a gimmick to change images?
Hard to forget the Christian Coalition's support for Ronald Reagan, George Bush and Dole, for Jesse Helms, Oliver North and for Gingrich's ``Contract With America.'' Suddenly it discovers the mean streets of America: ``Hey, we're here to help. Sorry it took so long.''
OK, keep the cynicism on ice. But in their hullabaloo over helping the poor, Republicans should recall J.C. Watts' line at their '96 convention: ``Character is doing right when nobody is looking.'' MEMO: Mr. Grady is the Washington columnist for the Philadelphia Daily
News, 400 N. Broad St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19101. ILLUSTRATION: Drawing
RALPH REED
KEYWORDS: CHRISTIAN COALITION EDITORIAL