A GOP struggle for the podium

With days to go before the Republican National Convention, the culture wars are heating up again. This time they’re starting at home, as the Republican Party’s election-year overtures to moderates clash with its affirmations to conservative Christian voters.

Many socially conservative leaders feel slighted, saying their representatives have been edged out of prime-time convention speaking slots by more moderate Republicans, such as California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and former New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani -- who favor legal abortion -- and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who opposes a constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage.

Their push for a bigger piece of the action has generated a small movement.

Indiana Rep. Mike Pence got 127 Republicans in Congress to sign a letter calling for a central speaking role for Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.), who is anti-abortion, saying his appearance would electrify the delegates like “Elvis at Memphis.”

Ralph Reed, chairman of the Bush campaign for the southeast region, said religious leaders are being invited to attend the convention and “we’re continuing to talk to people about being part of the program.” Last Thursday, Michael Reagan, the son of President Reagan who is a conservative radio host popular with evangelical Christians, was added to the list of speakers. “He’s very well-regarded,” Reed said. “He has a big audience out there.”

Reagan said he would use his five-minute speech to introduce a tribute to his father. “This has nothing to do with moderates versus conservatives in the party,” he said. “The party was not coming to me to say that this is for all the conservatives upset because they don’t have enough speakers at the convention. My dad was elected president of the United States because a lot more people than conservatives voted for him.”

Reagan said he would not use the podium to delve into contentious issues, such as government backing for stem cell research, which the Bush administration supports in a limited form. (His brother, Ron Reagan, raised Republican hackles when he called for greater government support for the research in a speech at the Democratic National Convention.)

“I didn’t want to do a political speech,” Michael Reagan said. “This has everything to do with honoring Ronald Reagan.”

Even admirers of the Reagan legacy would like to see more prime-time conservatism.

Conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly said she thought her party was engaged in a misguided attempt to spotlight moderate “political celebrities” who play well to a liberal media. Janice Crouse, a leader of Concerned Women for America, said President Bush should worry more about evangelical Christian voters, or he will jeopardize their support in tight races in the crucial swing states. “The gays and pro-abortion people are saying you’ve got to add a plank,” Crouse said. “If the president adds that plank, they will nail him to it.” Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson is talking about not going to New York at all.

“Apparently political stars get rewarded with a prime-time convention spot if they disagree with President Bush’s position” on a constitutional gay marriage ban, “as well as ... President Bush’s position on the right to life,” conservative columnist Paul Weyrich said. “They can also disagree with the president’s position on capital punishment, guns and a host of other issues.”

“As an Orthodox Christian, I am outraged that men like this would be highlighted,” Weyrich said. “If the president is embarrassed to be seen with conservatives at the convention, maybe conservatives will be embarrassed to be seen with the president on election day.”

Reed says there’s room for everybody in New York. “We are a broad and diverse party with leaders that appeal to a broad spectrum of voters,” Reed said. “That will be reflected from the podium. But social conservatives and conservatives in general will be well represented.”

What those conservatives say will be of great interest to Christopher Barron, the political director of the gay and lesbian Log Cabin Republicans, who feel betrayed by White House support for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Depending on what happens at the convention, they say they may not repeat their 2000 endorsement of Bush.

“We’re going to be there. We’re going to watch and listen,” Barron said. “Gays and lesbians made it clear that this was a line in the sand that could not be crossed. And the president’s support for this discriminatory amendment has jeopardized the endorsement of our organization, and the support of a million gay and lesbian voters and their friends and families. The organization is considering not endorsing the president.”

Former Reagan White House advisor Gary Bauer said the overwhelming passage of a gay marriage ban in Missouri ought to convince Bush that he shouldn’t care.

“Republicans appeal to swing voters in crucial Heartland states like Missouri, Michigan and Ohio because they represent socially conservative values,” Bauer said. “So it doesn’t make sense, when you’re talking about swing voters,” to try to appeal to people like the Log Cabin Republicans.

If anything, Crouse said, Republicans should be trying to send a message to evangelical Christians at the convention. During the last election, when the Bush campaign downplayed his anti-abortion sentiments, at least 4 million evangelical Christians did not vote, “because they were not motivated to get out and vote,” she said.

“President Bush will err if he does not court the evangelical vote. He needs to have a strong evangelical speaker,” she said. “If these voters get out and vote, they could swing the election.”

Emphasizing conservative values at the convention would help Bush distinguish his party from the Democrats, who she felt blurred the party distinctions in Boston by highlighting Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John F. Kerry’s decorated military service in Vietnam and focusing on faith and family.

“The Democrats tried to have it both ways too,” she said. “I was amazed at some of the things they said. They stressed family values. They stressed faith. I laughed when a commentator said they stole Republican values. They really did.”

If Bush fails to adequately emphasize conservative values, “he’ll lose,” Crouse said. “The majority of Republicans are [anti-abortion]. They see society as a very dangerous place, where the values they want their children to hold are being trashed. Particularly women. So those women are going to be listening to hear if their concerns are addressed.”

But so far, she said, the lineup of speakers creates the impression that the Bush campaign is trying to distance itself from evangelical Christian supporters in an attempt at “avoiding controversy,” she said. “We’ve been painted as extremists, in terms that nobody would want to play up their association to.”

One person familiar with the Bush campaign said there is a special personal sensitivity behind the attempt to present an image of prime-time moderation, dating back to 1992, when President George H. W. Bush felt that Pat Buchanan’s convention speech damaged his reelection bid, which proved unsuccessful.

Buchanan stunned some viewers by declaring that there was a “religious war going on in our country for the soul of America ... a cultural war.” He called on Republicans to take back America, “block by block.”

This is not the first time social conservatives have tried to push Bush to the right. During the race for the 2000 nomination, anti-abortion stalwarts and candidates such as Bauer and Steve Forbes tried to get Bush to define his stance on the abortion, even as they trailed badly in the polls.

But religious leaders such as Pat Robertson were willing to support Bush despite his moderate public pronouncements, feeling that with Bush religious conservatives finally had a prayer.

“We’re not very big fans of Don Quixote,” Robertson, who is chairman of the Christian Broadcasting Network, said at the time. “What we want is a winner.”

The Christian Coalition expresses similarly pragmatic views today. Coalition spokeswoman Michelle Ammons said the group is comfortable with an understated role at the convention. The Coalition, which in 2000 distributed 70 million voter guides specially designed to be tucked into church bulletins, has “for security reasons” nixed a plan to bring to bring in 50 or 60 busloads of Christians for a rally, Ammons said.

But that doesn’t signify any philosophical shift, she said.

“It’s not like a secret that religious conservatives favor the Republican Party,” Ammons said. “I think [Bush] is the most conservative president we’ve ever had.”

Coalition President Roberta Combs has been a Republican delegate for 20 years, and “she knows politics better than anybody,” Ammons said. “She knows how to organize a precinct and how to organize a county. It’s all about getting out the vote.”

Reed said that when social conservatives criticize the convention lineup, they are forgetting about two important prime-time conservative speakers: the president and the vice president of the United States.

It’s some of the other speakers conservative activists are worried about.

“A lot of those political celebrities are not popular with rank and file grass rooters,” Schlafly said. “They want to see people who express their conservative views.”