All in the family: top Bush administration leaders, religious right lieutenants plot strategy in culture `War'.

White House political strategist Karl Rove sounded like a general addressing his troops. "We need to find ways to win the war," Rove said. "This is a gigantic war with a whole series of battles that need to be fought. And what you all do every day is win important skirmishes a yard at a time."

But President George W. Bush's top adviser wasn't talking about the war on terrorism. He was talking about the White House's close alliance with the Religious Right in the nation's war over values.

Speaking to the Family Research Council's 2002 Washington Briefing, Rove assured a gathering of key Religious Right activists from around the country that the Bush administration shares their views on issues such as granting tax aid to churches, restricting abortion, opposing gay rights laws, promoting marriage and appointing "conservative" judges.

It was a speech that spoke volumes about the ongoing influence of the Religious Right in America. With the Christian Coalition fading as a political force, Republican political leaders are turning to other Religious Right organizations to plot strategy and lure conservative Christian voters into their column. These days, the Family Research Council (FRC) is moving to the front of the pack as a savvy lobbying group that plays partisan hardball.

The Washington, D.C.-based outfit has an annual budget of over $10 million, a grassroots network of contacts around the country and, perhaps most importantly, the ardent backing of James Dobson, the radio counselor who sparked the FRC's formation and gives its leaders a nationwide audience whenever the political situation warrants.

The group's agenda is decidedly hostile to the separation of church and state. FRC's goal, said its president Kenneth L. Connor, is "to help the family in our country and to advance a society that is informed with a Judeo-Christian world view and that reflects in the final analysis the sovereignty of the Lord over all aspects of our daily life."

The FRC's influence in the Bush White House shows in the guest list drawn to its annual briefing. In addition to Rove, other administration figures included Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Mel Martinez, White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives chief Jim Towey and White House Deputy Director of Public Liaison Tim Goeglein. (Claude Allen, deputy secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services, was also scheduled to speak, but was called out of the country at the last minute.)

Rove's March 14 appearance at the gathering of some 300 state and local activists is apparently part of the administration's campaign to establish a stronger relationship with the Republican Party's religious wing in advance of the 2002 and 2004 elections. Last December he complained publicly that the GOP vote among evangelicals in 2000 was less than it should have been and vowed to "spend a lot of time and energy" on improving the turnout.

At the FRC briefing, held in the chandelier-bedecked Crystal Room of the Willard Hotel a few blocks from the White, House, Rove ticked off the laundry list of Bush positions sure to make Religious Right hearts beat faster. As activists munched on salmon, roast beef and other delicacies, he appealed for help in winning congressional battles and increasing the Republicans' strength in the Congress.

Rove cited the administration's drive to reauthorize "charitable choice" aid to churches to provide social services, and he touted a White House plan to spend $300 million for state programs to encourage families and marriage. He denounced all forms of human cloning and said he was "shocked" when the Orthodox Jews announced support for therapeutic cloning. He called support for that position "morally reprehensible to anybody who cares about life."

Rove hailed House passage of the so-called "Born Alive Infants Protection Act," calling it "a wonderful piece of legislation" and "another step in this creating a culture of life."

"We got it through the House," he said. "We're going to have a battle in the Senate. You've been an early supporter of this. This is an important piece of legislation. We need to make certain it's embodied in the budget or in legislation this year."

Rove also touted "crisis pregnancy centers"-- religiously motivated agencies that encourage pregnant women not to have abortions -- as "fabulous defenders of life." He said the administration is looking for ways to assist the centers with equipment and staffing.

The White House operative devoted a large part of his talk to the topic of Bush appointments to the federal courts. Speaking on the day a Democrat-led Senate committee was preparing to block the appellate court nomination of Charles Pickering, Rove called the rejection a "judicial lynching" and warned that the dispute was a prelude to other nominations.

"This is about the future," he said. "This is about the Supreme Court. And this is about sending George W. Bush a message that you send us somebody who is a strong conservative, you're not going to get him. Guess what? They sent the wrong message to the wrong guy."

Rove urged the crowd to make Senate resistance to Bush judicial appointments a political weapon in the upcoming elections.

"This is not a happy day for the United States Senate," he said. "But we will prevail in this battle because the American people are with us. This needs to be the issue in every race around the country for the United States Senate."

During the question-and-answer session, Rove reiterated Bush's opposition to laws protecting gay people's rights.

"[Bush] believes marriage is between a man and women, period," observed Rove. "He also believes that we should not carve out special privileges for people on the basis of sexual orientation."

While Rove said Bush would not reject candidates for government posts solely because they are gay, he added, "We've got a culture in our country, particularly a culture that's applauded in this town, that says if it feels good, do it -- and better yet, embody it into law. And he doesn't agree with it."

Rove concluded with an appeal for the Religious Right to work closely with the Bush administration.

"There will be some times we'll win, and there will be some times we'll lose," he said. "There will be some times you in this room and we over at the White House will find ourselves in agreement, and there will be the occasion when we don't. But we will share a heck of a lot more in common than we don't. And we'll win if we work together far more often than the other side wants us to be. Thank you for what you do in your states. And thank you for what you do for FRC."

The other administration officials at the meeting also sounded themes designed to cement Bush's ties with religious conservatives. HUD Secretary Martinez, for example, stressed guidelines he has issued encouraging churches to take advantage of federal housing grants and permitting religious displays and activities in publicly funded developments. He even included a reading of Psalm 37.

Towey, chief of the "faith-based" office, took a similar approach, dismissing constitutional objections to government funding of church-based social services as "foolishness." He argued that the Supreme Court is moving away from a "strict separation" approach to church-state separation, and said he thinks the justices will approve the Ohio voucher scheme that funds religious schools.

Towey praised H.R.7, the highly controversial House bill that allows religious social service agencies to receive massive public funding and still discriminate in employment. He called for Senate passage of a "faith-based" bill, so the two measures can be reconciled and sent to Bush for signing before Memorial Day.

Goeglein, the White House liaison to evangelical Christians, didn't give a speech at the briefing, but was present for all three days of the event, schmoozing with participants and listening to Religious Right concerns.

The administration put forward its full-court press because Dobson, the FRC and other forces of the Religious Right have been restive since Bush has been in power. While the president and his regime have regularly selected personnel and pushed policies that aligned with the Religious Right agenda, the record has not been perfect, as some Religious Right purists expected it to be.

At the Washington gathering, Religious Right activists reflected strong support for Bush, but disappointment that he has not taken a harder line on social issues. FRC Vice President for Government Affairs Connie Mackey told the crowd that FRC activists and their allies are sprinkled throughout the government. But that doesn't always translate into easy policy victories.

"I love 'em and I hate 'em," groused Mackey about the administration. "I could just kill them sometimes, because we know what they need to do and they don't always do it our way."

She continued, however, "Lobbying works now from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue and everything in between -- that means all the federal agencies. The good news is that with President Bush in office a lot of FRC people are in place. And that's the good part that makes our life a lot easier."

Dobson, an FRC board member, displayed a similar spirit in a dialogue with FRC president Connor. Asked what he thought of the Bush administration, Dobson replied, "Compared to what? Compared to his predecessor?

"We have reason," said Dobson, "to be very, very thankful, I think, -- now this is my own statement and it almost sounds political and I don't mean it that way -- but thankful that George Bush is in the White House. I'm very thankful for those 350 votes in Florida. You just think, my goodness, we could be dealing with Albert Gore at this time. And I shudder to think what would have happened on 9-11 if he had been in the White House."

However, Dobson added, "His administration is not ideologically committed to everything we are obviously. I know that you feel, Ken, and I don't know if you have shared this, you have to push on them a little bit to get them to do the right thing."

Calling the administration's record "mixed but mostly positive," he praised Bush's marriage advocacy but blasted the bipartisan education bill, giving Bush a "D-" on the subject. The bill, he said, did not include vouchers for religious schools and it gave more power to the National Education Association, which he denounced for supporting the "homosexual agenda."

Dobson remains obsessed with the gay issue. He told the crowd, "Without question in my mind, the greatest danger to our moral perspective and to the family and indeed to the nation is the homosexual activist movement."

"Homosexuals want it all," he charged. "They want everything.... They want it all, and what's scary about it is they're getting it all."

Unlike Religious Right leaders such as Jerry Falwell and Ralph Reed who are loyal Republicans, Dobson remains something of a renegade, willing to publicly bash GOP officeholders who fail to live up to his theocratic agenda. In 1996 he even went so far as to vote for Howard Phillips, a far-right presidential candidate, because Bob Dole failed to court the Religious Right. (Phillips, the nominee of the fringe Taxpayers Party, is aligned with the radical Christian Reconstructionist movement that seeks to impose biblical law on the United States.)

Operating from his Colorado-based Focus on the Family empire, Dobson lobs rhetorical shells at administration leaders when they stray into "liberal" positions. After Secretary of State Colin Powell encouraged condom use for sexually active teenagers during an interview on MTV, Dobson unleashed his radio listeners in a telephone barrage on the White House. Dobson took credit when Bush quickly reemphasized his support for abstinence education programs a few days after the Powell remarks.

At the FRC event, Dobson asked Rove to thank the president for his courage in contradicting Powell.

"It didn't take courage, it just took conviction," Rove replied. "He wasn't rebuking the secretary of state. He was just making clear what the policy of this administration was with clarity. Sometimes people are going to say things and be off tune a little bit, but the president will make certain that people understand clearly where the administration is coming from by word and deed."

In order to keep the pressure on the Republican Party leadership to conform to their agenda, Dobson and his allies at FRC continue a courtship with figures on the political far right. A featured speaker at the Washington briefing was Pat Buchanan, the fiery right-wing pundit whose third-party candidacy for president could easily have tilted the 2000 election to Democrat Al Gore by siphoning off conservative voters.

Buchanan, author of a new book The Death of the West, railed against immigration from Mexico and other Third World countries, declining birth rates in the United States and other Western countries, weakening influence for Christianity and secular humanist control of the public schools, tie charged that the GOP "raised the white flag in the culture war" at its convention in 2000.

Although critics see his message as intolerant, racist and xenophobic, Buchanan remains intensely popular with many in the FRC crowd. He received enthusiastic applause when introduced and at the end of his remarks. "You're my hero," one man gushed, during the question-and-answer period. But Buchanan's harsh anti-immigrant, anti-Hispanic rhetoric didn't set well with some Religious Right strategists.

Tom Minnery, a top official of Dobson's Focus on the Family, chided Buchanan for his anti-Hispanic swipes. He noted that Hispanic Catholics in California are sympathetic to the Religious Right agenda on "family" issues and played a key role in blocking gay rights proposals in the legislature recently. FRC, meanwhile, has hired a full-lime staffer to cultivate the Hispanic community.

This shows that FRC leaders, unlike unsophisticated Religious Right leaders of the past, are politically savvy and pragmatic, studying and responding to demographic changes and relying on focus groups to craft their message. They also play political hardball.

FRC is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization that is limited by the IRS Code in the kinds of political activities it can conduct. As a result, FRC leaders have created a companion group, American Renewal -- with a 501(c)(4) tax classification -- to wage its more overt political crusades. Connor, an unsuccessful Republican gubernatorial candidate from Florida who followed Gary Bauer as head of FRC, serves as president of both groups.

At the FRC meeting, Connor said American Renewal exists because some politicians need to feel the heat before they see the light. He jokingly introduced the unit's executive director, Richard Lessner, as "the hammer."

Insisting that politicians operate mostly out of fear of losing reelection, Lessner said, "We need to twist arms and stomp our feet and sometimes kick up some dust to make them do what they may not want to do.... It's who's able to bring the most pressure to bear against the politicians at any particular time that's going to win the battle. So American Renewal is sort of the pointy end of the spear, if you will, for FRC."

He boasted about American Renewal's well-publicized media assault on Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.). Lessner's unit, in conjunction with the Dobson-allied South Dakota Family Council, ran advertisements in South Dakota newspapers accusing the Democratic senator of helping Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Under a picture of Saddam, the ad asked, "Why is America buying 725,000 barrels of oil a day from this man?" Under a picture of Daschle, it answered, "Because this man won't let America drill for oil at home."

The ad charged that Daschle was blocking a Bush administration energy bill that would allow oil exploration in the Alaska Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Some news media observers saw the ad as a cheap shot and a clear example of dirty politics, but the FRC briefing crowd wildly cheered Lessner's comments about it.

Calling Daschle "one of the main obstructions we have in Washington right now," Lessner said "we are going to make him feel some pain and pay a price for his obstructionist tactics."

At a minimum, the anti-Daschle ad campaign reinforces the partisan character of American Renewal -- and its parent group, the FRC.

Although Lessner noted that his operation has also sent one mailing criticizing Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) for failing to support a strict ban on cloning, the overwhelming majority of American Renewal's work has been on behalf of Republicans. During the 2000 elections, statement after statement bashed the Democratic Party platform and candidates Gore and Joe Lieberman. American Renewal pushed for Bush's victory in the post-election confusion and campaigned hard for the confirmation of John Ashcroft as attorney general.

Partisanship at the FRC briefing was pervasive. For example, Daniel Lapin, an ultraconservative rabbi who often speaks at Religious Right gatherings, told the crowd he isn't comfortable declaring that the Republicans are "the party of God," but he is sure that "today the Democratic Party is evil and destructive."

At its March 15 luncheon, FRC's Connor presented Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) with a "Faith, Family & Freedom" citation. Other speakers at the briefing included U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), Bush ethics advisor and Princeton professor Robert P. George, Reagan administration staffer Peggy Noonan and "Christian nation" activist David Barton, who is vice chair of the Texas Republican Party. (Barton hosted a tour of Washington monuments emphasizing the Christian aspects of American history).

Connor, Dobson and company now are gearing up for what they view as the most important battle of all -- the fight to get right-wing nominees on the U.S. Supreme Court who will reverse rulings upholding church-state separation, reproductive rights and related concerns. While these Religious Right figures may have quibbles with the Bush administration over an issue here or there, all will be forgiven if hard-right nominees are placed on the high court.

Insisting that all important family and moral issues are decided by the justices, Dobson said the first Supreme Court nominee is "a critical moment."

"If Christians don't get off their backsides and let our voices be heard on that one," he warned, "we're going to get rolled again."

When that moment comes, Dobson and the other forces of the Religious Right will be ready. Those who support church-state separation and individual rights will have to be ready too.