c. 2005 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ Richard Land, James Dobson and Paul Weyrich are angry _ angry at “activist” judges who they say are legislating from the bench, angry at Democrats who try to derail judicial nominations and angry at Republicans who are allowing the filibuster to survive.

But these leaders of the Christian right reserve a special anger for Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who helped broker a compromise on judicial nominees with seven Democrats and six other Republicans.

McCain can “forget about his presidential ambitions” in 2008, said Weyrich, co-founder of the now-defunct Moral Majority and president of the Washington-based Free Congress Foundation.

McCain, a longtime nemesis of religious conservatives, wasn’t the only lawmaker threatened with retribution.

“Trust me,” said Land, president of the Southern Baptists’ Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. “Conservatives know who to blame, and they will have an opportunity to express their feelings in the primaries of 2008.”

Evangelical political leaders said the real losers in Monday’s (May 23) compromise are not President Bush’s judicial nominees, nor his core supporters who rallied around them, but Republican candidates who will have to look elsewhere for support in coming elections.

Those who ignored or forgot “the conservative Republicans who helped expand this (Senate) majority” in last year’s election will pay a price, said Tony Perkins, president of the Washington-based Family Research Council.

Focus on the Family Action Chairman Dobson said he felt betrayed and abandoned by a “cabal of Republicans” who derailed what has been called the “nuclear option” or “constitutional option,” which would have ensured a vote on each of Bush’s judicial nominees by removing the filibuster as a weapon to avoid action.

Referring to upcoming elections, Dobson said, “I am certain that these voters will remember both Democrats and Republicans who betrayed their trust.”

Almost from the beginning, religious conservatives had rejected any hint of compromise on the issue and said the only acceptable outcome would be an up-or-down vote on all Bush nominees, not just the three who were included in Monday’s last-minute deal.

“We had the momentum to win and they insisted on betraying us and there will be a price for that,” said Weyrich.

McCain’s role reopened old wounds. His 2000 presidential bid tanked in Virginia and South Carolina when he called religious broadcasters Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson “agents of intolerance” who exerted an “evil influence” on the Republican Party.

McCain seemed to take the latest retaliation threats in stride. A maverick who has often blazed his own course, McCain has never enjoyed close ties with conservative evangelicals, or even tried to cultivate them.

“We expect it to be denounced severely by both extremes,” he told CNN’s “American Morning.” “They’ve spent a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of effort trying to continue this polarization.”

Other senators are also in the cross hairs. Sen. Mike DeWine, an Ohio Republican, should prepare to “pay a dear price” in his re-election bid in 2006, Weyrich said. Perkins also singled out DeWine, John Warner of Virginia and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, in an interview with the Associated Press.

Conservative religious groups say the compromise by the “Gang of 14” senators only ups the ante for the Holy Grail of judicial nominations _ a possible open seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Conservatives are worried that the filibuster could be used by Democrats to block a Bush appointee for the high court. The agreement “spells trouble for any nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court,” said R. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.

Mohler accused “centrist Republicans” of placing “the rules of the Senate over the sanctity of human life and the integrity of marriage.”

Perkins, of the Family Research Council, said the “long-term consequences” for those who supported the compromise will ultimately be determined by how they vote on any Supreme Court nominees.

Political observers said that while religious conservatives did not win the all-out victory they hoped for, it’s too soon to say that their power has been diluted, or that they no longer enjoy the access to Washington leaders they earned by playing a key role in re-electing President Bush last year.

Corwin Smidt, professor of political science at Calvin College, said conservatives scored a major symbolic victory by bringing the issue to a head in the first place. Without their prodding, Democrats may have succeeded in sinking all of the Bush nominations that had been blocked by the threat of a filibuster.

“Obviously, religious conservatives got some of what they want, but as is true in politics, particularly when you’re talking about compromise, you don’t necessarily get all of what you want,” Smidt said.

John Green, a veteran observer of religion and politics at the University of Akron, said conservative groups will have to draw upon a valuable tool gained from decades of legislative battles.

“One thing they’ve learned,” said Green, “is patience.”

MO END ECKSTROM

_ Shawna Gamache contributed to this story.

Editors: Search the RNS photo Web site at https://religionnews.com for file photos of Land, Dobson, Weyrich and Perkins. Search by name.