ORANGE COUNTY VOICES : Christian Right Is Wrong About the GOP : Politics: The party needs consensus and inclusion, not the divisive, rigid ideology of the ‘family values’ faction.

The Christian right recently issued yet another “do it our way or else” warning to the Republican Party in trumpeting the findings of one of their polls on abortion and family values. Such moves toward ideological rigidity and purity should not go unchallenged by those concerned about the party’s future.

According to the Rev. Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition, “removing pro-family issues from the Republican Party is a recipe for disaster.” Their survey finds that “37% of churchgoing voters would leave the party if Republicans removed the pro-life plan from the platform.”

Are these guys for real?

At a time when weary Republicans are searching for consensus and attempting to put together a credible alternative to President Clinton’s economic plan, Rev. Robertson wades in and cries, “Family values, family values.” It’s hard to see the logic in this position, given the message the voters sent George Bush in November in communicating their overwhelming concern over pocketbook issues.

Would Robertson have had the GOP talk more about abortion in this past election?

It’s also difficult to find comfort in the assertion by Robertson’s group that their announcement is made in the spirit of a friendly reminder and that the Christian Coalition is “not saying these issues should be the central or most important thing the party talks about.” Well then, why the announcement? Why interject the family values and abortion questions into the middle of the fight over the largest tax increase in American history and an unprecedented national debate over health care and deficit reduction?

Despite kinder and gentler protestations to the contrary, the Christian Coalition’s intent is clear: to hold the GOP true to the course of ideological purity, litmus tests and devotion to the single-issue cause of abortion.

It has been suggested that party moderates and thoughtful conservatives (including myself) blame the Christian right for George Bush’s defeat. That’s wrong. George Bush is no longer President because he failed to meet the threshold of voter expectations on three levels: that he understood the true extent of Americans’ concerns over the economy; that he cared; and that he had a plan to fix things.

Those failures, and not the Christian right’s rigid adherence to social issues, sent George Bush back to Houston. The leaders of the Christian right have created a useful straw man in a “don’t blame us for the defeat” argument precisely in order to legitimize the carrying on of the values and abortion debate.

The timing of their announcement and their warning about Christian voters leaving the party should the platform be changed raises the question of whether they see a Republican Party committed to winning elections, including the presidency, or the advancement of a single-issue cause using the party as its convenient vehicle.

Christian leaders are correct in asserting that Christian voters were a key component in George Bush’s support. But they’re wrong in continuing their on-the-record demands and threats for ideological rigidity based on the overall performance of Christian voters.

Post-election data from 1992 show that among regular churchgoers, 31% of Protestants, 49% of Catholics and 38% of evangelicals and fundamentalists Christians voted for Bill Clinton. When you add in those who voted for Ross Perot, Bush lost among Catholics by a 66% to 34% margin and lost among evangelicals and fundamentalists by a 56% to 44% margin.

Such results from the real world of politics do little to support the Christian right’s claims of homogeneity as a voting bloc and are more reminiscent of the behavior of rank-and-file union members in deserting their left-of-center leadership for Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984 and George Bush in 1988.

On the abortion issue, Christian right leaders are quick to point out that Bush won handily among the 12% of the electorate that voted on this single issue. They’re right. What they’re wrong about, however, is the further impact the party’s perceived anti-choice, anti-woman and anti-tolerance image had on the remaining 88% of the electorate, already dissatisfied with Bush’s performance on the economy.

Abortion should not be a defining issue for the Republican Party. Millions of Republicans are pro-choice. So are many millions more of other voters, who agree with the Republican position on a host of other key issues, but not abortion.

These realities beg the question: Will the Republican Party be big enough to embrace those who differ from the Christian right on abortion? Will such dissenters be welcome as leaders and candidates?

And back to the fears of party leaders such as myself, over the true motivation of the Christian right. Should it be the job of the Republican Party to lead the single-issue crusade on abortion, and in an inflexible and dogmatic fashion that puts other, more salient issues at risk?

My opening contribution to this unavoidable debate is an emphatic “No.” Party leaders and elected officials must center the debate on the axis of what builds the party and not on what builds ideological purity. (In Clintonesque terms read: Party Building, Stupid!) The task at hand is to bring voters in, not drive them away.

On other social issues such as school choice and voluntary prayer, the Christian right points to broad public support for GOP positions. They may be right, but conservative positions won’t be worth anything if they are communicated incorrectly. If voters perceive the Republican Party’s message to be mean-spirited, exclusionary, divisive or intolerant, then the message will be rejected, regardless of its merits.

And a further worry, which ought to be considered as part of the question of where and how the Christian right fits into the overall GOP coalition, is that “values” should not be communicated politically in sectarian terms. The risk of alienating the vast majority of voters is absolute, as Mississippi Republican Gov. Kurt Fordice found out when he tried to assert that America was solely a “Christian nation.”

When I turned over the reins of the party leadership last month, I posed a question to the Republican National Committee members first asked by a woman GOP activist, who was involved in a battle with the Christian right. That question is: Is there room in our party for individuals whose personal definition of what it means to be a Republican is different from your own?

If the leaders of the Christian right answer sincerely in the affirmative, then the prospects for an intelligent, civil and party-building debate over the next four years should be possible.

If their response is negative, then party leaders will be faced with ugly internal dissent, wild platform battles, divisive party meetings and conventions, walkouts and threats of the creation of third parties, all of which is alarmingly reminiscent of the Democrats during most of the period from 1968 to 1992.

Party activists on all sides of the debate would do well to remember how the Democrats finally solved their problem: They kept on losing until they got tired of it.