Karl Rove & " The Language of Bullies " ?

Values lobbyists have White House's ear
09:51 PM CST on Saturday, March 12, 2005
By WAYNE SLATER / The Dallas Morning News
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – From the studio where Richard Land hosts his weekly Christian radio show, he can almost see the red states. He can certainly hear them.
On any given Saturday, the phone lines fill up with listeners who share his conservative views on gay marriage, abortion, school prayer and the selection of judges – and the 58-year-old Texas native frequently carries their messages to Washington.
No longer outsiders, Mr. Land and a handful of other Christian leaders find themselves influential partners with a Republican Party in power.
They played a pivotal role in the re-election of George W. Bush, one of the nation's most overtly religious presidents, and in boosting the number of social conservatives in Congress. Now, they're using tactics honed over years of campaigns – including threats to mobilize millions of followers – to put their stamp on federal policy.
"The president didn't run a Ronald Reagan 'It's Morning in America' kind of campaign. He campaigned on pretty specific issues," said Mr. Land, who directs the political efforts of 16.3 million Southern Baptists. "And I fully expect him to keep his campaign promises."
To that end, Mr. Land and fellow Christian Soldiers are pressing Mr. Bush on the most aggressive religious agenda in decades: a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage; the appointment of judges willing to overturn abortion rights; legislation to allow churches to endorse political candidates without jeopardizing their tax-exempt status; and allowing the display of religious symbols on public property and prayer in school.
Critics warn that they want government to impose a narrow religious agenda that blurs the line between church and state.
"All these guys will be lining up to promote this hard-right, extremist agenda that, in most cases, is not what the American people want," said Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.
"This is not the language of traditional spiritual values," he said. "This is the language of bullies."

Wielding influence
But who are the values lobbyists, and how have they been able to root themselves so deeply into national affairs?
Some, like Colorado author and radio personality James Dobson, are nationally recognized figures. Others are less well-known but have strong ties to the Bush administration and the Republican leadership in Congress.
Among them, the Rev. Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition, an organization of 43,000 churches; the Rev. Ted Haggard of the National Association of Evangelicals; conservative Catholic leader Richard Doerflinger; and Texas Republican vice chairman David Barton, whose organization WallBuilders actively challenges the separation of church and state.
Every week, the White House conducts regular conference calls with religious leaders. The conversations are led by Tim Goeglein, a top aide to Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove.
In last year's election, the phone calls helped cultivate Christian leaders to boost turnout among evangelicals by at least 3.5 million voters. Evangelicals accounted for a quarter of Mr. Bush's vote in 2004 and helped provide the margin of victory in battleground states such as Ohio.
Mr. Land's office, the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, distributed "I Vote Values" kits to thousands of pastors providing instruction for voter registration drives.
The Republican National Committee hired Mr. Barton to travel to states with anti-gay marriage initiatives on the ballot to rally voters to the polls.
Once Mr. Bush won re-election, Mr. Land, Mr. Dobson and others dubbed the Arlington Group flexed their political muscle in a letter to Mr. Rove. They threatened to withhold grass-roots support for the president's Social Security program unless the president champions the constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage.
"A lot of us talked to the president and people around the president and said this is a huge issue," Mr. Land said. "The only way to stop the judiciary on this is a constitutional amendment."
The White House scrambled to reassure doubters that the president remained committed on the issue. At a morning briefing with reporters, White House spokesman Scott McClellan declared that the anti-gay marriage amendment remained a priority. The specter of electoral punishment is a useful tool for applying that pressure. Mr. Dobson is threatening to unleash an army of Christian listeners to his daily radio broadcasts on the issue of the appointment of judges. In letters to 1.2 million supporters, Mr. Dobson warns of challenges to the re-election of Democratic senators in six "red" or "purple" states – those won by Mr. Bush or closely contested – in 2006 if they filibuster Mr. Bush's conservative nominees.
Jim Wallis, a progressive evangelical leader and author of God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It, said the danger of the values lobby is that it emphasizes abortion and gay marriage to the exclusion of poverty, tax policy and health care as issues with a moral dimension.
"The right is comfortable with the language of religion and faith and God and values. They sometimes act like they own God and they narrow everything to one or two issues," he said. "How could anybody suggest there are only two religious issues in public life?"

Warning on ties


Analysts warn that by aligning too closely with religious conservatives, the White House and the GOP risk appearing hard and intolerant, and thereby could lose support among independents and moderate Republicans. The rise of the values lobby reflects a new political alignment in which the divide is not between religious voters and nonreligious votes, but within religion itself, analysts say.
"It's less important whether we're Roman Catholics or Baptists, as which side of that divide we're on – the traditional side or the post-modernist side," Mr. Land said.
The result is an unprecedented coalition of traditional evangelicals, conservative Roman Catholics and orthodox Jews working together in Washington.
"That's how I, a Southern Baptist, have more in common with Pope John Paul II than I do with [fellow Baptists] Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton," Mr. Land added.
The power of the newly mixed lobby was evident when about 800 people gathered at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel for an inauguration-week reception hosted by the Traditional Values Coalition.
Moving among evangelical powerbrokers were members of Congress and the administration. Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee, assured the faithful: "Promises made will be promises kept."
Mr. Sheldon, the leader of the coalition, was ebullient, declaring that the "fusion of religion and morality and public policy has now come about."
E-mail wslater@dallasnews.com
EFFECTS ON VOTE

How important was the values vote in the 2004 election?
According to exit polls, "moral values" was the No. 1 issue cited by voters in determining their preference for president.
But pollsters did not define what moral values meant. Gay marriage? A candidate's character? The war in Iraq?
What is known is that white evangelicals who consider abortion and same-sex marriage priorities turned out in big numbers and voted overwhelmingly for President Bush.
Professor John Green at the University of Akron says White House political adviser Karl Rove succeeded in boosting turnout among Christian evangelicals by at least 3.5 million voters over the 2000 election.
Moreover, the president's opposition to gay marriage and abortion helped motivate a majority (52 percent) of Catholics to vote for him. Turnout was high on both sides, and studies suggest that evangelicals made up the same share of the electorate last year as they did in 2000.
"My sense is the evangelical community expanded its turnout at about the same rate as the country as a whole," Mr. Green said.
In other words, conservative values voters were no more important to the outcome of the presidential race than voters motivated primarily by the issues of terrorism, taxes or the environment. But without them, Mr. Bush would have lost.
Wayne Slater
WHO ARE THE VALUES LOBBYISTS?

Richard Land
President, Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention
He's the face of the conservative Southern Baptist agenda in the corridors of power. With a booming voice and a high corona of dark hair, Mr. Land, 58, looks more like a Southern preacher than the Princeton- and Oxford-educated scholar of church history he is. Born in Houston, he met George W. Bush in 1988 when he was a professor at Criswell College in Dallas. He's known White House political wizard Karl Rove even longer.
Mr. Land is a regular on the weekly White House teleconferences with other key evangelical leaders.
James Dobson
Founder, Focus on the Family
A child psychologist by training and Christian broadcaster by trade, Mr. Dobson has one of the most influential evangelical voices in America.
Mr. Dobson, 68, is an outspoken opponent of abortion and gay marriage – and he sees the appointment of conservative judges as crucial to curbing both.
His claim that the cartoon figure SpongeBob SquarePants was gay prompted snickers in secular quarters, but in much of evangelical America, his word is gospel.
David Barton
Founder, WallBuilders
When activists working to pass a gay-marriage ban in Ohio needed help, they called on David Barton. Mr. Barton, 51, vice chairman of the Texas GOP, traveled the country in the last campaign to cultivate Bush-friendly religious conservatives.
His books and videotapes challenging the separation of church and state have become the evangelical canon on the subject. His Aledo-based WallBuilders publishing company remains a prolific source of materials highlighting the Christian heritage of the founding fathers.
The Rev. Ted Haggard
President, National Association of Evangelicals
In the political arithmetic of Washington, Mr. Haggard, 48, represents some pretty big numbers: 30 million Christians from 45,000 churches across 52 denominations. As leader of the nation's largest association of conservative evangelicals, Mr. Haggard is an outspoken advocate on Capitol Hill and in the White House.
He thought that a federal marriage amendment should have been at the center of the last presidential campaign. But his portfolio is broader – protecting the environment, promoting religious freedom abroad, fighting racism at home and helping the poor. And, he stresses, assisting the poor requires a commitment to global free markets.
The Rev. Donald Wildmon
Founder, American Family Association
When the Mississippi Legislature required classrooms to display posters bearing the words "In God We Trust," it provided no money to pay for them. Enter Mr. Wildmon, 67, and the Tupelo-based American Family Association with 42,000 such posters.
The Methodist pastor from Mississippi founded his anti-pornography group in 1977, but his clout lies in his string of Christian radio stations along with a large e-mail list.
The Rev. Lou Sheldon
Founder, Traditional Values Coalition
For Mr. Sheldon, 71, President Bush's re-election was cause for a party – a big one inaugural week at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Washington. Hundreds attended the bash thrown by the Traditional Values Coalition – including evangelical luminaries Ralph Reed and Jerry Falwell and White House political chief Karl Rove.
Mr. Sheldon's group, which represents 43,000 churches with offices in Anaheim, Calif., and Washington, has been particularly active in promoting a gay-marriage ban and changes in the tax code to allow churches to endorse political candidates.
Richard Doerflinger
Director of pro-life activities, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops
When he was a child, Mr. Doerflinger's older brother was severely injured in a car wreck that left him in a coma. Doctors said he would never emerge, but a few months later, his brother woke up. The experience helped shape Mr. Doerflinger's thinking about life and death.
Balding and bespectacled, Mr. Doerflinger, 52, is the Catholic Church's chief lobbyist on abortion, stem-cell research and euthanasia. Under his direction, the bishops distributed a voter's guide to 19,000 Catholic parishes with a hard line on moral issues. In November, 52 percent of Catholics voted for President Bush.
Jim Wallis
Editor, Sojourners magazine
Democrats call Mr. Wallis "our evangelical." Mr. Wallis, whose magazine presents a progressive Christian philosophy, says moral values are about more than abortion and gay marriage. They're also about social justice, peace and the poor, he says.
His best-selling book, God's Politics: How the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It, is required reading by Democrats stung by Republican victory in the values war. In closed-door meetings on Capitol Hill, Mr. Wallis, 56, has chided Democrats for failing to "speak the language of faith" on their terms.
Wayne Slater