Democrats Begin to Counterattack the Religious Right : Politics: After ignoring a continual lashing, President Clinton goes on the offensive, along with top officials. But they risk a backlash.

For months, President Clinton and his party have turned the other cheek in the face of scorching, sometimes outlandish onslaughts by religious and cultural conservatives.

But within the last 10 days, the President, his surgeon general, a member of the House leadership and Democratic consultants have gone out front with criticism of “the radical right” and its “extreme agenda.”

The apparently uncoordinated counterattacks signal a new and potentially risky strategy of Democratic engagement. Even carefully calibrated critiques are being characterized by conservatives as religious bigotry.

Oliver North, who won the Republican nomination for Senate in Virginia with strong backing from religious conservatives, applied the phrase Tuesday night to Clinton’s outburst last week against “violent personal attacks” cloaked in the mantle of religion.

“I think that’s a great case of religious bigotry,” North said on CNN’s “Larry King Live.” “I think that the comment by President Clinton, and it was echoed by other leaders of that party, was a direct attack on people who work hard, pay the taxes and go to church.”

Religious conservatives have been gaining influence in state Republican parties. Clinton, meanwhile, has been tarred as anti-family, immoral and worse in conservative mailings, publications and religious broadcasts almost since the day he took office.

Still, the Administration started off on a conciliatory mode. David Wilhelm, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, spoke last year to the million-member Christian Coalition. Clinton invited evangelical clergy to the White House.

Analysts cite several developments that may have triggered the Democratic counteroffensive: the approach of midterm elections, the dominance of religious conservatives at state GOP conventions in Minnesota, Texas and Virginia, and a videotape that accuses the President of murder.

The tape, produced and sold by the Rev. Jerry Falwell, features the stunning--and unsubstantiated--charge that the Clintons arranged the murder of an Arkansas man who allegedly had a file documenting extramarital affairs by Clinton since 1982.

Last week, Clinton specifically denounced Falwell and conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh. It was a cathartic moment for the President, but it overshadowed the events Clinton’s staff had arranged to highlight the need for congressional action on a crime bill.

There was also a belated consensus that the President should be above this fray. On Monday, it was not Clinton but political adviser Paul Begala doing battle with Falwell on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

“Rev. Falwell is producing and hawking a videotape that accuses our President of murder. It’s nothing short of obscene,” Begala said.

“I have never accused the President of anything,” Falwell said. He attributed the accusations to “scores of Arkansans” and said he was justified in raising character questions “when the President is womanizing and living a life as he lives.”

“This is the politics of hate from Jerry Falwell and he should ask the forgiveness of the American people and God almighty,” Begala replied.

Falwell’s tactics evoke a mixed reaction from conservatives. North refused to criticize him, but former Education Secretary William Bennett, speaking Tuesday on CNBC, reproached Falwell for “messing with . . . bizarre stuff” that he called “beyond the pale.”

As the Falwell-Begala exchange suggests, the new Democratic engagement is locking both sides into a cycle of charge-and-response.

Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders’ reference to “the un-Christian

religious right” last week prompted 87 House Republicans to demand her resignation Friday.

The day before, 44 Senate Republicans had asked Clinton to repudiate the religious bigotry they said was evident in remarks by Rep. Vic Fazio (D-West Sacramento), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Fazio had said religious right activists had used stealth tactics to take over state Republican parties and try to impose an extreme agenda.

Geoffrey Garin, a Democratic pollster, said speaking out does carry a risk of backlash. But the alternative, he said, is allowing conservative activists to continue to “operate beneath the radar. The danger of saying nothing is . . . nobody knows what they’re doing or trying to achieve.”

Democrats running for state, local or congressional offices could benefit from depicting a Republican Party in the grip of the radical right.

However, it’s not clear what Clinton stands to gain by drawing attention to the battering he and his aides are taking in conservative broadcasts and direct-mail appeals.

Exhibit A is the Falwell videotape, once familiar only to devotees of his “Old Time Gospel Hour” and readers of a few conservative publications. But since Clinton remarked on its “scurrilous and false charges,” it has been a staple of columns, articles and talk shows.