Politically Incorrect

...He's now the public face of the Christian right, more likable than Robertson and considerably smoother with the press...

...Reed "delivered the mammoth evangelical vote-currently one-third of the electorate-for the Republican Party," declared Newsweek flatly...

...Corry did not make, however, is the political significance of the fact that the efforts all occurred within the week before the November 8 election that produced the emergence nationally of more black conservatives who reject the failed nostrums the liberal/Democrat elites have been feeding them for thirty years...

...At the beginning of the book, when Reed outlines the way America would look "if religious conservatives took their proper, proportionate place as leaders in the political and cultural life of the country," the end of legalized abortion is mentioned only obliquely ("children would be considered a blessing rather than a burden...

...In the January 1995 Continuing Crisis, you reported At Hunt died...

...But this won't happen if the Christian Coalition, the most powerful pro-life group in the country, gives higher priority to the passing of, say, the Paperwork Reduction Act than a measure to curb abortion...

...Practically no conservatives and very few Republicans (except GOP Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who wants the religious right to leave the party entirely) fault the decision to broaden the Christian right's agenda beyond abortion, school prayer, and gay rights...

...This is merely a tactical shift, he insists...

...Not to worry, Reed says...

...Instead, Casey had to invite himself, whereupon he delivered one of the most compelling pro-life speeches in years...

...The sad truth is this: the longer the issue is ignored, the harder it will be to raise it in Congress and elsewhere later...

...Now I am in the embarrassing position of believing your report and trying to check it out...

...Single issue pro-lifers don't have the clout...

...I am among the multitudes who have believed him, but t have done so partly because I wanted to and partly because you were putting your reputation behind him...

...Brock to reassure those who have trusted him by bringing legal action...

...Paul Locke Tulsa, Oklahoma Some Gall Thanks to John Corry for mirroring my reaction to the media mob's participation in the transparent effort "to lynch Clarence Thomas" ("Playmates of the Month," TAS, January 1995...

...Armed with Mr...

...Hunt's unpardonable and rude behavior arose because Ms...

...If you miss out on him, you've probably lost religious conservatives altogether...

...supplement, "Womanews...

...It's divisive, and Republicans wanted to 68 The American Spectator March 1995 concentrate on the economic issues that unite them...

...Brock's word for all this, no matter how congenial his account of events is to one's prejudices...

...Halting taxpayer subsidies to pro-abortion organizations like Planned Parenthood and permitting states to put restrictions on abortion will have an effect...

...He's become a political star in his own right...

...The gap between his account of the Anita Hill affair and that of his opponents has passed anything that can be explained in terms of differing opinions about who ought to be believed...

...Working on other issues-crime, taxes, education-will strengthen our voice on matters of conscience, not weaken it," he writes...

...Fred Barnes is a senior editor of the New Republic...

...But the rub remains the same: his willingness to downplay the family and moral issues around which the Christian Coalition was organized...

...They're important-every candidate needs a team of consultants-but they're also interchangeable...

...Was this some sort of joke...

...At one point, Reed repeats the myth that political consultants are the "bosses of the new politics...

...And though the coalition endorsed 60 of the 73 House Republican freshmen elected in 1994, it hasn't prompted any of them to push the pro-life cause aggressively in Washington...

...Brock's meticulously researched Spectator report, I pointed out several of the reportorial and investigative errors of Mayer-Abramson that had been compounded by Ms...

...Is there another Al Hunt I am unaware of...

...Politicians, even those who are pro-life, may get comfortable with having abortion-and all the unpleasantness and turmoil that surround it-off the agenda...

...Reed, 33, has come a long way since that press conference...

...Brock's invaluable work, those rascals could succeed in their never-ending smear campaign...

...Charen declared the Mayer-Abramson twaddle to be an outrage...

...If Christians settle for that, they "do our religious beliefs an injustice and fail society as well...

...The real bosses are those who influence entire voting blocs...

...Reed's ostensible aim was to promote a new poll showing the Republican Party would suffer if it abandoned pro-family and moral issues...

...Barbara Brotman interviewed Mayer-Abramson in the December 18 p.c...

...Please explain-I think it would be appreciated by more than myself...

...But when a reporter asked him whether giving moral issues low priority amounted to jettisoning them, Reed said: "We are not saying these issues should be the central or most important thing the party talks about...

...There are no issues with any higher priority than cultural, educational, and moral issues...

...To me, it was immediately apparent that the mob was sending a thinly veiled warning as to what awaits any other blacks who dare leave the liberal plantation...

...POLITICALLY INCORRECT: THE EMERGING FAITH FACTOR IN AMERICAN POLITICS Ralph Reed Word Publishing (Dallas)/ 312 pages/ $19.95 reviewed by FRED BARNES Ralph Reed, the executive director of Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition, invited William Bennett, the Republican virtuecrat, to be the star attraction at a press conference in Washington two years ago...

...The alternative is "to huddle in the ideological ghetto erected for us by our opponents...

...But there's another way Christian conservatives can fail: by accepting the priorities of mainstream politics instead of emphasizing the moral issues that motivated them in the first place...

...Brock of intimidating sources...

...Sue Myrick of North Carolina, have done just the opposite, proclaiming the abortion issue was irrelevant to their election...

...When the Christian Coalition gathered in Washington last year, it didn't invite the leading abortion foe among elected officials, then-governor Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, a Democrat...

...Likewise, in politics there is nothing wrong and everything prudent in changing the game plan at halftime if necessary to win...

...We are saying values are important and should not be excluded from the cluster of issues that mobilize voters...

...Brotman was serving to the public...

...CORRESPONDENCE (continued from page 11) tents...

...Merrill Orne Young Surry, Virginia Where's Aldo...

...During the debate over health care reform, for example, opposition to taxpayer-funded abortion interwove with concerns about physician choice and jobs like an unbroken tapestry...

...But that doesn't mean the abortion issue should be put off indefinitely...

...Robert J. Stelton Lemont, Illinois It must be difficult for dedicated, hardworking Wall Street Journal reporterettes to awake one morning to find their hard work turned to irrelevance...

...Yes, it made sense politically to leave abortion out of the GOP's Contract With America last fall...

...I value this position and have a large group of influential people who know me...

...Reed notes that "since the emergence of the pro-family movement, religion has changed our politics, but politics has also changed religious folk...

...Tactics can be destiny...

...Coupled with compassionate alternatives to abortion, restrictions on abortion will lead to its gradual extinction," Reed writes...

...I was shocked when I read the report and called the newspaper and a television station to see if they knew about it...

...I took exception to the poison Ms...

...I wonder...

...Ralph Reed is one of them...

...Racing beyond a mere insult, Mr...

...Brock with integral dishonesty...

...If that's what they think, they're wrong...

...Marc Lemelin Whitinsville, Massachusetts Your report on the death of At Hunt in the January issue has caused me much embarrassment...

...Hunt further charged Mr...

...I'm not questioning Reed's commitment to stopping abortion, only his tactics...

...I have been in the advertising and public relations business for over fifty years and have established a good relationship with the news media...

...3 69 The American Spectator March 1995...

...We need to see this matter laid out in open court, because I do not see how one can go on indefinitely taking Mr...

...Let's be clear...

...William J. Urban San Antonio, Texas You have invested a lot of credibility in David Brock...

...Doing so, he says, does not represent a "retreat" from the Christian right's "compassionate defense of innocent human life and its support of the traditional family...

...His Lincolnian vision of "the withering away of a vast social evil" is realistic...

...I have had to go back to the media and apologize for calling them about this...

...The columnist Rich of the New York Times goes so far as to accuse Mr...

...Fine, but my worry is that it has also taught them, or at least their leaders, that they can put off moral issues without harming those causes...

...If the Christian Coalition doesn't force Republicans to deal with abortion after disposing of the contract's ten items, who will...

...When "Capital Gang" came on Saturday-I became furious...

...Some endorsees, like Rep...

...It has taught them not to expect a heaven on earth, to take defeat (and victory) with a grain of salt, and to respect the right of their political foes to play on the same field...

...And it's precisely this that creates tension in Politically Incorrect, Reed's account of the rise of religious conservatives...

...Shortly thereafter in a Chicago Tribune article, Ms...

...The reporter might have liked this, but Bennett didn't...

...Brotman...

...The Tulsa World is our only newspaper and is extremely liberal, but they respect me and publish most of my letters to the editor...

...Surely somebody here is knowingly telling lies or being maliciously indifferent to the truth, so a libel action ought to be possible...

...Strange Justice indeed...

...If that happens, Reed and the Christian Coalition will have gained strange new respect at a very high cost...

...Pollsters, strategists, and media wizards are "far more important than party officials and often more famous than the candidates who hire them...

...Am I missing something here...

...He's also a shrewd, effective political operative who was instrumental in the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994...

...On the other hand, one can certainly not believe detestable people like Rich unless their accuracy is vindicated by public sworn testimony...

...This kind of irresponsible reporting should never be associated with conservative beliefs...

...In sports, if the defensive team is preventing the ground game, the offense should pass the ball...

...Even if you were trying to be satirical, it was a terrible joke...

...Reed argues that Christians must address a wide range of issues because religious values "inform every aspect of our lives...

...To win at the ballot box and in the court of public opinion," Reed writes, religious conservatives "must speak to the concerns of average voters in the areas of taxes, crime, government waste, health care, and economic security...

...Without Mr...

...If you miss out on Ed Rollins, you can still hire Charlie Black or Stu Spencer...

...I think the time has come for you or Mr...

...That makes the burden on him-to do the right thing, to go against the flow if necessary, to press ahead on moral issues even when his Republican allies are leery-all the heavier...

...I disagree," he said...

...One point that Mr...