DATE: Saturday, September 20, 1997          TAG: 9709190018

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B8   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial 

                                            LENGTH:   77 lines

CHRISTIAN COALITION NO MORE MR. NICE GUY PAT ROBERTSON SPEAKS HIS MIND FREELY

News out of the Christian Coalition's recent two-day conference in Atlanta makes clear that the organization is a political machine and proud of it.

It is not a political machine that admits to endorsing candidates. Such an admission would get it in immediate hot water with the IRS and the Federal Election Commission, both of which are investigating the coalition.

But it is a machine that seeks to dictate to the Republican Party whom to nominate for president and what agenda to pursue. It is a machine that has high-tech tools and fervent grass-roots volunteers to help elect the Republican candidates it picks.

One might ask: How can an organization pick and support candidates without endorsing them? Beats us. But the election laws are murky, and the FEC has been timid about enforcing them. When it tries, it's not very successful. The IRS has been considering the Christian Coalition's tax-exempt status for eight years without ruling on it. In fact, many organizations that generally favor one party over the other have maintained tax-exempt status by making the same claim as the Christian Coalition: that they are primarily political education groups. So anything is possible.

We're on record as believing that political speech should be unfettered and that voter guides such as the coalition employs ought not to be regarded as in-kind contributions to candidates, one FEC claim. But we also believe that tax exempt status ought to be severely limited. We question whether many groups involved chiefly in political advocacy - including the coalition - should qualify for it.

But whatever the legal ramifications of the news out of the Christian Coalition conference, another curtain around the group was drawn open when its founder and chairman, Pat Robertson, spoke his mind freely, thinking his remarks were private. They were secretly recorded by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a Washington watchdog group. Transcripts were distributed to the media.

Friends and foes of the coalition probably were not surprised by most of what Robertson said.

Surely they were not surprised when Robertson, in boasting of the coalition's power, compared it to powerful political machines of the past, including Tammany Hall in New York City and the Byrd machine in Virginia.

Nor when Robertson said that the coalition wants to select and elect the next president of the United States and that ``. . . it will happen, not by rhetoric, and not by good intentions. It will happen by hard work.''

Nor when Robertson credited conservative Republicans' capture of the House in 1994 to the Christian Coalition.

Surely they were unsurprised when Robertson said, ``We need to be like a united front. I know that all these laws that say that we've got to be careful, but there's nothing that says we can't have a few informal discussions among ourselves.'' (Chuckles)

What might surprise friends and foes of the coalition is that Pat Robertson believes it has been too compliant and needs to become more forceful and less willing to back moderates. This might surprise members of the Republican Party platform and convention committees who have caved in to coalition demands. It might surprise Democratic candidates who were defeated in part by coalition efforts.

But in remarks secretly recorded, Robertson said, ``I think we've been far too reluctant. I've been the good guy, always, `Oh, yeah, whatever. We want to be team players.' Well, sure, yeah. But it's time for us to start leading the team.''

Robertson said the coalition should tell Republicans in Congress, ``Look, we put you in power in 1994, and we want you to deliver. We're tired of temporizing. Don't give us all this stuff about you've got a different agenda. This is your agenda. This is what you're going to do this year. And we're going to hold your feet to the fire while you do it.''

In other words, the coalition, a ``political education'' group, will educate the Republicans that they had better do things the coalition way or else.

It can try, but the more the coalition tries to impose its will, the more resistance it is likely to meet from Republicans. And despite Robertson's views, elections in America are won in the middle. The coalition's plan to forsake all moderation is a prescription for marginalizing the GOP, not for making it the dominant party.

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