DATE: Sunday, September 7, 1997             TAG: 9708270095

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J6   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Interview

SOURCE: The Boston Globe     

                                            LENGTH:  166 lines

RALPH REED ON RELIGION, GOP AND GRASS-ROOTS GROWING PAINS

Ralph Reed, the political wunderkind of the Chesapeake-based Christian Coalition, begins a new career and undertakes a bold challenge at the end of this month: making the Republican Party more populist and pro-family and steering it toward the status of permanent majority.

As head of Century Strategies, a consulting firm, Reed, 35, a Georgia native, will do his strategic planning from Atlanta, where he expects to advise conservative congressional candidates in 1998, and take his pick of presidential hopefuls to advise in the year 2000. In between jobs, Reed was interviewed by Boston Globe writer Mary Leonard about religion, Republicans, and the grass-roots political movement he plans to build outside the Beltway.

Q. Looking now from outside the Christian Coalition, what has the religious right contributed most to the contemporary political debate?

A. Three things. The first was moving the pro-family movement from marginalization to the mainstream. At the time the Christian Coalition was founded in 1989, the religious conservative movement was largely dismissed, not only by the pundit-political class, but also it was largely ignored by most elected officials. Moving it to a position where it is viewed as one of the most important and significant in the country is an accomplishment of historic dimension.

The second accomplishment was broadening the agenda of the pro-family movement beyond abortion and gay rights to much broader concerns. We've seen that come to fruition with the passage of the first tax cut in 16 years being signed by the president. The crown jewel, the $500-per-child tax credit, was the top domestic policy concern of the Christian Coalition since 1993. It's a huge achievement to have a constituency usually viewed as only caring about abortion and gay rights focusing on the issue of reducing the crushing tax burden on the American family and winning a huge public policy victory with a Democratic president.

The third accomplishment, and one that I am particularly pleased about, is that we were able to at least begin progress on reaching out to constituencies that had previously not been associated with our movement - Jews, Roman Catholics, Latinos, African-Americans. We've come a long way from 1994, when the Anti-Defamation League issued a report that was widely criticized alleging that the pro-family movement had anti-Semitic overtones.

Q. The religious right, you've often said, has gained a seat at the Republican Party's table. These days, that table looks to be in some disarray.

A. The Republican Party is in the process of probably the most significant evolution since blacks left it and moved to the Democratic Party in the 1930s. It is moving in a more populist direction. It is certainly moving in a more grass-roots, pro-family direction. It's becoming more a party of Main Street, small business rather than big business, a religious conservative movement rather than a purely secular, bottom-line, profits-oriented group. There are tensions in that evolution, there are growing pains.

But something else is going on. For 40 years the party was almost exclusively a presidential party, and it governed and fought like an executive party. It is now becoming more of a congressional party, with its center of gravity on Capitol Hill.

That's a huge change. We're used to thinking almost in monarchial terms. We've had a leader, like a Nixon, an Eisenhower, a Reagan, almost like Moses coming down from Mount Sinai with the tablets and telling us what we're supposed to do. Now we don't have that, and it's questionable whether we'll have that kind of leader in the foreseeable future.

Q. Are you disappointed with the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill, and do you sympathize with those insurgents who tried to remove Newt Gingrich as speaker?

A. Republicans are in the strongest institutional position in two generations, and we're spending all our time debating who goes to the guillotine. I'm not saying that some of the backbenchers' arguments aren't valid; we haven't always pressed our advantage, we haven't always had the most effective communications strategy. I guess what I'm questioning is whether or not deposing Newt Gingrich is the solution to those problems.

We ought to be focusing our energy on an agenda for the country going into the 2000 election cycle. If Bill Clinton gets another four years under (Al) Gore, by the time they get done, they will have shifted the center of gravity politically and appointed more federal judges than George Bush and Ronald Reagan combined.

Q. What should that agenda be?

A. I think that the main issues for voters are education, crime, taxes, and family concerns.

We've got to take the tax issue, now that we're winning it again, and press it, first for further tax cuts, second for a flat tax as a centerpiece in our 2000 presidential agenda.

We've got to develop a more comprehensive educational strategy. Let's propose taking 10 percent of the Education Department budget and returning it to local school boards; we think they can do a better job at spending this money than bureaucrats in Washington. Put school choice in the strategy, and a provision that children should be taught abstinence-based sex education. I think that's a good issue.

Republicans have got to get rid of their fear to press the moral and social agenda. The partial-birth abortion debate demonstrates this is a winning agenda. We've now passed the first ban on an abortion procedure since Roe vs. Wade by a margin in the House large enough to pass the constitutional amendment (banning abortion altogether). We've gained between six and eight votes every time we've voted on this.

We need to press a religious freedom constitutional amendment in the aftermath of the Supreme Court overturning the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. It would include voluntary school prayer, but be broader. That would badly position President Clinton; he can't support such an amendment.

Q. If these are winning issues, why do they frighten some Republicans?

A. There's been a conventional wisdom in the Republican Party that fiscal and budget issues are safe, and the moral and cultural issues are dangerous and controversial. I believe the opposite is true. After all, the killing field for Republicans in 1996 was not school prayer and partial-birth abortion, it was reducing Medicare and Medicaid.

The fact is, the less-government, balanced-budget approach defeats more Republican members of Congress than taking a strong stand on abortion and school prayer. There are many marginal districts where voters may not be with you on welfare and immigration, but they will be with you on school prayer and school choice.

Q. Which GOP presidential candidate will best make that case in the year 2000?

A. I think this is going to be the most wide-open contest for the Republican presidential nomination since 1940 or 1944. There is no clear front-runner for the first time in at least a quarter of a century, or longer. The nomination is really a jump ball, and that's going to make it very interesting.

I see two sets of candidates. In the top tier is anybody who, with relatively little difficulty, can raise $15 million. You put in this category George W. Bush. Jack Kemp, if he choses to run. I think Dan Quayle can do it. Obviously, Steve Forbes; he can spend his own money.

The next group - I would not call them insurgents because that has perjorative overtones - is clearly more grass-roots, and they are going to be more dark horses. That would be (Representative) John Kasich and (Senator) John Ashcroft; Pat Buchanan, if he decides to go again; one or two of the governors.

Those with the money have a leg up, but I do think there is a desire out there for a fresh face, an outsider who hasn't been associated with what has happened on Capitol Hill over the last four years. Whoever most successfully unites the traditional fiscal and economic conservatives of the party with the emerging strength of the religious and pro-family conservatives will win the nomination.

Q. Which of these men have the most appeal to religious, pro-family conservatives?

A. In 1992, you'd argue that the obvious one was Buchanan. Now it isn't so easy to determine. It could be Quayle, Kasich, Ashcroft, Kemp. Bush is not going to concede this constituency to anybody, and I think you can look for Forbes and (Lamar) Alexander to make a run at it, too.

Q. Your consulting services are expected to be in high demand in the next presidential election cycle. Have you decided whom you'll work for?

A. I've talked to a number of potential candidates - Ashcroft, Kasich, Quayle, Bush, Alexander - but I don't intend to make a decision until after the 1998 elections.

Q. You just got back from a family vacation at Disney World. Didn't that violate the Southern Baptist Convention's call for a boycott of the Walt Disney Co. for its ``immoral ideologies''?

A. Well, we went down to Orlando. We hit a number of the theme parks. We've never been, at the Christian Coalition, an advocate of boycotts as a strategy. We would never criticize other organizations for boycotting, but we've never really boycotted. I think that a better strategy toward Disney's programming decisions is public shaming - newspaper ads, phone calls, letters, telegrams, meetings with stockholders.

Q. Is the United States becoming a less secular nation?

A. I think as the baby boomers age and nest and raise children, they are wrestling with a moral focus and showing a much greater interest in spiritual matters and returning, collectively, to religious roots.

We had reached a point in our politics where it almost became passe to talk about faith, values, and God, and about His meaning to us, both personally and as a society. I think that's changing. I think it's possible that in 2000 you could see the most explicitly spiritual candidate win the presidency since Jimmy Carter in 1976. I think the American people are hungry for that. They desire a moral leader with deep spiritual values sitting in the Oval Office. ILLUSTRATION: Drawing

Ron Coddington/KRT

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu