c. 1996 Religion News Service

SAN DIEGO _ The religious right has emerged from the Republican National Convention with more influence within the party than it has ever had, despite its disappearance this week from the prime-time spotlight so the Dole campaign could pursue needed support among GOP moderates and swing voters.

“This movement is growing more and more solid and is nowhere near peaking,” said Gary Bauer, president of the Family Research Council. “It wrote the party platform and got just what it wanted in there. No matter what happens in November, we’re the future of the Republican Party.”

John Green, who heads the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron, agreed.

Religious conservatives, he said “demonstrated their ability to work the system. They’re not about to let go now that they have shown they are the party’s most committed core and their numbers are growing.”

But the gains religious conservatives made in San Diego would turn out to be a hollow victory if President Clinton is re-elected in November. Their primary goal is to replace him with a Republican president more sympathetic to their beliefs and able to appoint anti-abortion judges to the Supreme Court and to federal courts, creating the possibility of reversing the Roe vs. Wade decision.

This is why for now most in the movement have chosen to support and work for Dole, whose real commitment to their cause they doubt, despite his solidly anti-abortion voting record in the Senate.”I would have been happier with Pat Buchanan heading the ticket,” said Roger Lichtenberger, a religious-right backer from the San Diego suburb of Bonita. “It would have been a better ticket. But anything’s better than what we’ve got.”

During last week’s writing of the party platform, religious conservatives were everywhere, making sure that the document’s support for a human life amendment to the Constitution that would ban virtually all abortions remained in place and that a statement of tolerance toward moderate supporters of abortion rights was relegated to an appendix.

This week, with the convention dominating nightly prime-time television, religious conservatives _ who are primarily evangelical Protestants and tradition-oriented Roman Catholics who say moral issues are what’s most important to them _ agreed to stay out of the limelight so as not to scare off moderates and others Dole needs to win the election.

“If I had to choose between a prime-time speech and controlling the committee that writes the platform, I’ll take the latter any day,” said Ralph Reed, executive director of the Christian Coalition and the religious right’s leading political operative.

“Conservative religious people are sophisticated enough to know you don’t always get what you want politically. It’s a long-haul struggle. The Republican Party is not a church. It’s a political party and the point of a political party is to win elections.”

Instead of hearing their leaders speak from the convention center podium, as both Buchanan and religious broadcaster Pat Robertson did in 1992 in Houston, religious right convention delegates and supporters contented themselves this time with rallies at San Diego’s Sea World and Balboa Park.

The rallies attracted thousands and emphasized support for Dole and Jack Kemp _ although at times not all that enthusiastic, judging by applause levels.

Buchanan labeled it the “truce of San Diego.”

“I think we need to unite in one common purpose for the next ten weeks,” Buchanan said, “and that is to send Bill and Hillary Clinton back to Arkansas.”

The religious right prevailed at the convention where it counted _ the platform and Dole’s choice of an anti-abortion running mate.

Mike Russell, spokesman for the Christian Coalition, said the Dole camp had assured the group “several weeks” in advance of the convention that the vice presidential nominee would, as demanded by religious conservatives, be anti-abortion, although no specific person was named. That assurance came, Russell said, even as talk circulated of a convention walkout by some religious right delegates prepared to disrupt the gathering rather than accept an abortion rights advocate on the ticket.

In 1988, when Kemp and Christian Coalition founder Robertson were among the contenders for the Republican presidential nomination ultimately won by George Bush, there were bad feelings between the two. That prompted concerns among Republicans that Robertson might nix Kemp’s vice presidential candidacy. Russell denied published reports that party leaders obtained Robertson’s personal approval of Kemp; he also insisted that no hard feelings remained between the two men.”That was then,”Russell said,”now is now.” During last week’s platform hearings, religious conservatives seemed at times to be concerned only about abortion. This week, in support of Dole, they spoke as often in public about the candidate’s call for a 15 percent tax cut, which has become the centerpiece of the Republican presidential campaign. They noted the tax cut’s importance to financially strapped families, as well as its appeal to fiscal conservatives who do not share the religious right’s blanket opposition to abortion and concern for sexual and other issues of personal morality.

But they also made clear that they intend to not let Dole stray too far from the party platform they fought so hard to get _ and by which the candidate said he does not feel bound.

“In case you haven’t heard it from the (convention) podium the last two days, let me say it so there will be no doubt: the Republican Party is a pro-life party and will always be that so long as we are here,” Reed told about 4,000 emotionally-charged religious right supporters gathered in an outdoor amphitheater in Balboa Park Wednesday (Aug. 14).

The day before Reed spoke those words, hundreds of religious right delegates to the convention and supporters gathered in a tent-like structure at Sea World to lunch on shrimp and salute the anti-abortion movement’s leading lights.

In addition to Buchanan, Robertson and Bauer, they also cheered the Rev. Jerry Falwell, founder of the now-defunct Moral Majority; Alan Keyes, the former United States ambassador to the United Nations who also challenged Dole during the primaries; Phyllis Schlafly, who leads the Republican National Coalition for Life; and Beverly LaHaye, who heads Concerned Women for America.

“What a lovely party,” said LaHaye, a pioneer in the development of the religious right. “I only wish one thing, that this party could be held on the floor of the Republican National Convention.” Bauer, who followed her to the microphone, added: If religious right activists “stay the course, we’ll have this party on the floor of the Republican National Convention in the year 2000.”

The crowd went wild.

MJP END RIFKIN