Religious Conservatives

SAN DIEGO -- After religious conservatives gave Bob Dole decisive wins in Republican primaries earlier this year in the South, the executive director of the Christian Coalition was almost giddy.They had finally gotten "inside the castle" of the Republican Party, instead of just throwing rocks from the outside, said Ralph Reed Jr.Judging from the GOP convention, they have not gotten much further than the basement.Although religious conservatives wrote tough party platform stands on abortion, affirmative action and immigration, they are feeling dismissed and disrespected by party leaders determined this week to showcase moderates and submerge conflicts.

Helen J. Rizzo, a writer whose subject matter ranged from conservation and religious issues to growing up in Union Square, died of congestive heart failure Sunday at Ridgeway Manor Nursing Home. The longtime Westgate neighborhood resident was 85. Helen Joan Lukosevicius, a daughter of immigrant parents from Lithuania, was born and raised in the couple's Lombard Street rowhouse that stood between Stricker and Calhoun streets. "They were tailors and took an active part in the Lithuanian immigrant community that was centered around St. Alphonsus," said a daughter, Phila Hoopes of Westgate.

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. -- An invisible political primary is now under way. In country crossroads and in suburban churches, the lines are being drawn, sometimes with bitterness, sometimes with cold political calculation.But as conventional Republican candidates muscle for advantage in the battle to become the alternative to George W. Bush, should the Texas governor stumble on the road to the GOP presidential nomination, that invisible primary is being fought for the support of the party's increasingly restive -- and increasingly divided -- religious conservatives.

Vinton, Iowa -- Mike Huckabee, who plays bass guitar in a rock band called Capitol Offense, jokes that he wants to become president so he'll finally get to perform at the White House. I the next breath, turning serious, he says he is running to repay a debt he owes to a country that has given him so much. Launching into the story of growing up in a working-class family, he tells an audience of 100 rural Iowans that his humble upbringing gave him a steady moral compass. "The prophet Isaiah said it this way: `Look to the quarry from which you were dug,'" said Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister, who likes to talk in parables and sprinkle references to God, the Bible and prayer into campaign speeches.

WASHINGTON -- In one of the most provocative moments of the campaign season so far, Republican presidential front-runner George W. Bush pronounced Jesus Christ the "political thinker" with whom he most identifies. The Texas governor peppers his speeches with evangelical phrases, talks of sharing his heart and defines himself in terms of his religious awakening at age 40. But Bush has refused to utter the less ethereal words that have long been the most persuasive to the GOP's base of Christian conservatives: that he would rule out anyone who supported abortion rights as a running mate.

WASHINGTON -- So it has come to this: After 17 years of highly visible political activism in which religious conservatives managed to place moral and social issues at or near the top of the agenda for both parties, the nominee of the party with which they most closely identify says their paramount issue -- abortion -- is less important than, say, defending the tobacco industry.Appearing on ''Regis and Kathie Lee,'' Bob Dole was asked about New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman as a running mate.

Pat Robertson, the religious broadcaster whose Christian Coalition has emerged as a highly influential force in Republican Party politics, said yesterday that religious conservatives would begin working as early as 1997 to shape the message of the next Republican presidential campaign.Robertson said the group would try to take control from what he called inside-the-Beltway Republican operatives, whom he denounced as incompetent and uninterested in moral issues."We're not going to sit by as good soldiers and take whatever is given us," Robertson said in an interview.

Washington. -- The Rev. Jerry Falwell says he has been ''inundated'' since the election with requests from some religious conservatives to ''please, please, please crank up the Moral Majority again.''As one who labored in the organization as its vice president from 1980-85, I would advise please, please, please don't.The effort might provide some needed short-term cash for the struggling Falwell organization and for other groups like Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition. But if the objective is to change government policy and thereby to return America to its spiritual and moral roots, the approach is backward.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- Backing away from earlier criticism of religious conservatives, Colin L. Powell praised the political efforts of the Christian right yesterday and said he was "totally supportive" of their mission."

DES MOINES, Iowa -- Days before Monday's all-important Iowa presidential caucuses, many of the Republican candidates are stepping up their efforts to "out-conservative" each other in hot pursuit of this state's most treasured political prize: the religious conservative vote.But unlike in previous election years, when those voters proved a potent force in rallying behind a single candidate, the Christian conservatives have splintered their support this year and possibly diluted their strength.

WASHINGTON -- Trying to put his presidential candidacy back on track, Sen. John McCain lashed out at Democratic opponents of the Iraq war yesterday, describing them as defeatists and warning that a U.S. pullout could lead to genocide in Iraq and "another 9/11 or worse." McCain praised President Bush's latest plan as "the right strategy" in Iraq but never mentioned Bush's name in what campaign aides billed as the first of three major policy speeches. No longer the Republican front-runner, McCain is attempting to rebound from a series of self-inflicted setbacks, including weak fundraising and, most recently, a Baghdad visit that became a public relations debacle.

Everyone knows that George W. Bush is going to appoint a conservative (or two) to the Supreme Court. The question is, what's a conservative? Is it, for instance, someone who wants to let you, the individual, make as many decisions free of government encumbrance as possible? Or is it someone who wants to make sure that the decisions you make conform to traditional values? That dilemma always dogs the Republican party to some extent. "The traditional distinction is between social conservatives and economic ones," says James Gimpel, a political scientist at the University of Maryland, College Park.

WASHINGTON - Gratified, emboldened and feeling in large part responsible for the re-election of George W. Bush, Christian conservative leaders like Robert Knight had a message for the president this week regarding those who want him to unite the nation by taking a more moderate tack. "Mr. President: Ignore them, honor your base and let's roll up our sleeves and get some things accomplished, such as filling the Supreme Court with judges who know when life begins," Knight, the director of the Culture and Family Institute, wrote to Bush in a commentary.

WASHINGTON - As President Bush reaches out to his conservative Christian base by supporting a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, a poll released yesterday shows that more than half of the nation's white evangelicals oppose such a measure. According to the survey, 52 percent would prefer to rely on state laws to prevent gays from marrying rather than altering the U.S. Constitution. In addition, only 48 percent of white evangelicals said a candidate's support for gay marriage would disqualify him from receiving their votes.

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran's main reformist party will boycott the country's parliamentary elections this month, Mohammad Reza Khatami,the head of the party, said yesterday. The statement by Khatami to reporters, which was carried by the Islamic Republic News Agency, was the latest development in what appears to be a deepening political crisis in Iran after more than a third of the members of Parliament resigned Sunday over a sweeping exclusion of candidates by religious conservatives. "We will inform the nation about the facts that prove the illegal nature of the Feb. 20 elections," Khatami said in the statement.

DES MOINES, Iowa -- Vice President Al Gore and Texas Gov. George W. Bush seized the early lead in the 2000 presidential contest by handily winning the Iowa precinct caucuses last night. Gore crushed former Sen. Bill Bradley by roughly 2-to-1, making next week's New Hampshire primary all but do-or-die for the Democratic challenger. On the Republican side, an impressive turnout of social and religious conservatives helped Steve Forbes to a solid second-place finish, within shouting distance of Bush.

IS THE Republican Party dead? A number of recent stories in the press have suggested as much. You know, out of power, divided over social issues, no clear leader, no message -- those sorts of stories.How much of it is true? Well, this ailing party has elected a U.S. senator from Texas by a 2-to-1 vote. It has also captured the mayoralties of Los Angeles and Jersey City and most recently the lieutenant governorship of none other than Arkansas.What of the charge that divisions within Republican ranks, say between "mainstream" Republicans and the "religious right," will tear apart the coalition that elected Ronald Reagan twice and George Bush once?

WASHINGTON - Gratified, emboldened and feeling in large part responsible for the re-election of George W. Bush, Christian conservative leaders like Robert Knight had a message for the president this week regarding those who want him to unite the nation by taking a more moderate tack. "Mr. President: Ignore them, honor your base and let's roll up our sleeves and get some things accomplished, such as filling the Supreme Court with judges who know when life begins," Knight, the director of the Culture and Family Institute, wrote to Bush in a commentary.

WASHINGTON -- In one of the most provocative moments of the campaign season so far, Republican presidential front-runner George W. Bush pronounced Jesus Christ the "political thinker" with whom he most identifies. The Texas governor peppers his speeches with evangelical phrases, talks of sharing his heart and defines himself in terms of his religious awakening at age 40. But Bush has refused to utter the less ethereal words that have long been the most persuasive to the GOP's base of Christian conservatives: that he would rule out anyone who supported abortion rights as a running mate.

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. -- An invisible political primary is now under way. In country crossroads and in suburban churches, the lines are being drawn, sometimes with bitterness, sometimes with cold political calculation.But as conventional Republican candidates muscle for advantage in the battle to become the alternative to George W. Bush, should the Texas governor stumble on the road to the GOP presidential nomination, that invisible primary is being fought for the support of the party's increasingly restive -- and increasingly divided -- religious conservatives.