Dobson's choice: the religious right seems in disarray. It is really suffering from its own success.

The religious Right seems in disarray. It is really suffering from its own success.

Mr. Barone is Senior Staff Editor of Reader's Digest, and co-author of The Almanac of American Politics.

THE Christian Coalition is reportedly suffering financial problems. Promise Keepers has gone broke. Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network has just been fined for violating campaign-finance laws (ten years ago!). James Dobson of Focus on the Family has threatened to disown the Republican Party. The Family Research Council's Gary Bauer, contemplating a run for President, laments that religious conservatives have almost nothing to show for their 18-year commitment to the Republican Party. Is the religious Right finished as a major force in American politics? Are Christian conservatives and the Republican Party headed for divorce?

To understand what's going on it is best to take a long view. The two major sources of energy, enthusiasm, and elan in the two parties today are the religious Right and the feminist Left. Both speak for millions of Americans.

Yet 25 years ago neither was a major political force. In 1972, when the McGovern campaign's convention managers had to lose one procedural challenge in order to set a parliamentary precedent that would allow them to win California, the one they chose to sacrifice was a challenge to the South Carolina delegation because it didn't contain enough women. The feminists, they calculated, were the weakest part of their coalition. In 1976, the Republican Party nominated Gerald Ford, who was against restricting abortion. Fundamentalist and evangelical Christians in large numbers voted for Jimmy Carter in the fall. The religious Right was not an articulate part of either party's coalition.

Since then, obviously, things have changed. The one group which Bill Clinton chose to appear before outside the convention hall in New York City in 1992 was the women's caucus. And since Ronald Reagan was elected, the religious Right has exercised a veto power over the Republican presidential and vice-presidential nominations.

THROUGH all this the religious Right, like the feminist Left, has taken many organizational forms. Remember the Moral Majority, which liberals liked to say was neither moral nor a majority? It closed its doors years ago. And where was Ralph Reed, for eight years head of the Christian Coalition founded by Pat Robertson, when Robertson was running for President in 1988? Working in Jack Kemp's campaign. If today several organizations of the religious Right -- and we should remember that Promise Keepers is not a political group -- are foundering and others are seething with discontent, it is also true that the feminist Left is in disarray as more and more charges of sexual misconduct are being made against its paladin, Bill Clinton.

What is the function of groups like the Christian Coalition, or the National Organization for Women? When a political movement is new, attempting to draw on the inchoate appeal of its ideas to a hitherto unassembled constituency, it must articulate a set of messages and goals around which it can organize like-minded voters. Groups set agendas, establish litmus tests, lobby officeholders, and rate candidates. Over twenty years the feminist Left and the religious Right both have created constituencies of great size and force in American politics.

In the process, tensions inevitably arise between these organizations and the political parties and officeholders with whom they become allied. The groups are typically seeking goals that are not popular with the voting majority. After all, conventional politicians will usually do popular things without much prodding. The groups' goals, moreover, often split existing party coalitions; both parties' coalitions were split and reshaped on the issue of abortion. And there will be struggles between groups that are practical-minded and ones that are principle-minded, the former arguing for half-a-loaf solutions, which are more likely to be politically saleable (the partial-birth-abortion ban), the latter digging in their heels for what they ideally want, even if that is unpopular with the majority (banning abortion altogether). Think of the contrast between Ralph Reed, always ready to work with almost any Republican, and James Dobson, always ready to condemn Republicans for straying from principles.

What is happening now is that the religious Right has achieved most of the goals set by its practical-minded leaders, leaving its principle-minded leaders angry and frustrated that they have not done more. When Ralph Reed was its most visible leader, the religious Right enthusiastically supported the Republicans in 1994 and 1996. Their piece of the Contract with America was the $500-per-child tax credit, which eventually became law. Partial-birth abortion has become a visible national issue, and the proposed ban on the procedure has passed both houses of Congress by large margins. The fulcrum point of opinion on abortion generally has moved toward the position of the religious Right.

But an outright ban on abortion remains highly unpopular. Action on many other issues can be blocked by Clinton vetoes. And Republicans in Congress, after the beating they took in public opinion on the 1995 - 96 budget fight, have been skittish about raising almost any issue on which they are likely to be attacked by the feminist-Left-dominated press. A strong argument can be made that congressional Republicans have become too timid. But it is also true that their narrow majorities, especially in the House, mean that the small number of Republicans who don't favor culturally conservative stands can deprive the party of its majority. That is what has happened on National Endowment for the Arts funding. And Republicans certainly can't deliver the two-thirds vote needed for a constitutional amendment allowing prayer in school.

REPUBLICAN leaders can make a case that they're doing just about as much for the religious Right as they can, and on occasion they evidently have made this case: after House Majority Leader Dick Armey met with Dr. Dobson in mid March, Dobson abruptly cancelled meetings with the New York Times and Washington Post editorial boards, at which he had been expected to criticize congressional Republicans.

All of this strikes me as evidence less of sickness than of health in the relationship between the religious Right and Republican politicians. What we're watching are attempts to bridge the gap between principle-minded groups, which have an incentive to seek the unpopular, and political officeholders, who have an incentive to seek the popular. This is evidence of the success, not the failure, of the religious Right. If the constituency its activists have brought together has become too large to be manipulated by those activists, it has also become too large to be ignored by politicians.

Bauer and others are evidently talking about settling on one presidential candidate for 2000, in the hopes of getting a true believer. But Reed was talking about the same thing in 1994 and 1995, and found that it was impossible: almost every Republican candidate (definitely including Bob Dole) made a plausible case to religious-Right voters, enlisted religious-Right activists in the campaign, and won significant numbers of religious-Right votes. The leaders of the religious Right several years ago refuted the Washington Post's charge that their constituency is poor and uneducated; now they are finding out that it is not easily led.

Of course there is the possibility of a nasty rupture that the press will delightedly seize on and which may demoralize both the constituency and the politicians. But right now I would rather have the problems of the religious Right than those of the feminist Left -- of mobilizing a constituency understandably dissatisfied with what its political allies have been able to achieve than of maintaining the morale of a constituency whose political champion has betrayed some of its core beliefs. At the moment, of course, that's little comfort to James Dobson.