How far Bush will go on conservative agenda

For over a decade, Christian conservatives have served as loyal foot soldiers of the Republican Party, manning phone banks and getting out the vote.

Now it's payback time. When the new Congress convenes in January, Republicans will control both houses - and the nation's policy agenda. For religious conservatives, this bodes well for progress on issues such as abortion, cloning, and school vouchers. Perhaps most important to this key constituency, the path is now clear for Senate approval of conservative federal judges around the country.

For President Bush, the challenge is obvious: to satisfy his activist base while keeping mainstream Republicans happy. He wants no rerun of May 2001, when the moderate Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont quit the Republicans and threw control of the Senate to the Democrats.

Two days after last month's midterm elections, the White House stressed to social conservatives in a conference call that their issues can't come first. "The White House is definitely sympathetic and has bent over backwards to make their support clear," says Deal Hudson, editor of the Catholic magazine Crisis,and a participant in the call. "On the other hand, it's not going to have its own chronology or calendar dictated by their concerns."

Some anti-abortion groups will be suspicious if they perceive a delay in bringing forward legislation to ban "partial-birth" abortions. But overall, Bush enjoys wide support from Christian conservatives. He is open about his own faith and seems comfortable in a world that seeks to blend religious conviction with public policy.

There is no doubt, say longtime observers of the religious right, that this administration has taken to heart the lessons of '92 and '94. President Clinton's first issue, gays in the military, made him appear captive to his party's left wing. And after the GOP swept Congress in 1994 with their Contract With America, they led with social-conservative issues and alienated the political mainstream.

"They've learned the lesson of 1994: not to overreach," says a Senate aide with ties to religious conservatives. He recalls then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, right after the election, promising to pass a constitutional amendment allowing prayer in schools. "That wasn't even the Christian Coalition's goal," the aide says. "[Coalition director] Ralph Reed called him up and said, 'Now's not the time.'"

But the world has changed. The big religious conservative groups have fallen on hard times. Many of their organizers are now in mainstream Republican politics - organizers such as Mr. Reed, who's chairman of the Georgia Republican Party.

America is deep in a war on terrorism, with a religious dimension that intensifies support for Israel among evangelical Christians and the administration. Today, the religious-conservative grass roots have "almost a personal relationship with this president," says the Senate aide. "They never had that with his father or Reagan and certainly not Newt."

Page: 1 | 2