DATE: Friday, April 25, 1997                TAG: 9704250007

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B11  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: OPINION 

SOURCE: BY E. J. DIONNE JR. 

                                            LENGTH:   86 lines

RALPH REED RESIGNS THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT LOSES ITS MOST SKILLED TACTICIAN

Ralph Reed first showed his stuff to a national audience the week before the 1992 Republican Convention in Houston. President Bush's lieutenants were trying to put together a party platform with broad appeal that could also mollify the party's right.

It was going to be tricky no matter how skillfully done. And that was before the arrival on the scene of a young man with an angelic face, a fine gift for publicity, and a gentle manner that hid a ferocious competitiveness.

Day after day, Reed would stand amid the tumult of the press section near the platform committee deliberations, pointing to the latest victories rung up by religious conservatives. By week's end, Reed had displaced Bush's spokesmen as the leading interpreter of the Republican platform. It came to be seen as a Christian Right document. The Bush campaign had a new problem, and the Christian Coalition had arrived.

Reed's announcement on Wednesday that he is stepping down as executive director of the Christian Coalition to start a political consulting firm is a milestone in American politics. Reed leaves having built a mighty force, but without having come close to the promised land. Despite Reed's best efforts to put a moderate face on his movement, it continued to generate deep mistrust in the electorate, and regularly found itself blamed when Republicans lost.

The Christian Coalition's potential was underestimated early on, in part because the organization grew out of Pat Robertson's failed 1988 presidential campaign. Even very conservative and very religious Republicans had misgivings about electing a television evangelist as president, especially one given on occasion to propounding some pretty rickety conspiracy theories.

But when Robertson hired Reed to organize the Christian Coalition, the young operative knew the Robertson campaign was the beginning, not the end. Robertson's effort was for Christian conservatives what the campaigns of Eugene McCarthy, Robert Kennedy and George McGovern had been for anti-war Democrats in the late 1960s and early 1970s: a jumping-off point to gain experience, to organize at the grass roots and to take power in state and local parties.

Reed knew that church-going people are self-organizing. ``The advantage we have,'' he once said, ``is that liberals and feminists don't generally go to church. They don't gather in one place three days before the election.''

The problem for Reed was that no matter how moderate he sounded, no matter how many precincts he organized and how many state parties his forces took over, many Americans, including very conservative ones, become queasy whenever they see religion and politics hugging each other too tightly.

Many of the traditionalists Reed chose to speak for were also tolerant. They were torn over, rather than hostile to, the great social changes of the last three decades. They embraced the value of the family but did not not want to abandon women's equality or a more accepting attitude toward gay people.

Reed understood this, and the limits his movement faced, better than just about any of its other leaders. So he embarked on an intricate balancing act that became his signature. At times, he suggested that Republicans might find compromise language on the abortion issue, only to back off when he came under criticism for selling out the cause.

After Bush's 1992 defeat, he took his own side to task, declaring that ``the pro-family movement's political rhetoric has often been policy-thin and value-laden, leaving many voters tuned out.'' His most recent effort, potentially his most substantive, was to declare that the Christian Coalition would dedicate itself to easing the problems of poverty and to fighting racism.

When he announced his departure, Reed proclaimed victory for inclusion. ``We have matured,'' he said, ``into a movement known not for its self-righteousness but for its repentance and spirit of reconciliation.'' That may be what Reed wanted, but it is not how those who have tangled with the Christian Coalition see things.

That is because the movement has two impulses. The first is the quest by religious conservatives for, in Reed's phrase, ``a place at the table.'' How, Reed asked at the news conference, could a tolerant society treat those ``whose political views were informed'' by faith ``as second-class citizens?'' Reed is right about this. His legacy is that he expanded the ground for religious activism - which, paradoxically, led religious moderates and liberals to mobilize, too.

But then there is the second impulse. A movement theoretically dedicated to inclusion so often seemed interested in exclusion. Especially in the bitter fights over feminism and homosexuality, the movement looked and sounded harsh, divisive and, yes, at times, intolerant. If Reed, with all his skills, could not square this circle, it's not clear who can. MEMO: Mr. Dionne is a columnist for The Washington Post. ILLUSTRATION: RALPH REED

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