 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Washington Post - November 8, 2004 Evangelicals say they led charge for the GOP By Alan Cooperman and Thomas B. Edsall Those revelations produced a flurry of accusations that the Bush campaign was leading churches to violate laws against partisan activities by tax-exempt organizations, and even some of the White House's closest religious allies said the campaign had gone too far. But the untold story of the 2004 election, according to national religious leaders and grass-roots activists, is that evangelical Christian groups were often more aggressive and sometimes better organized on the ground than the Bush campaign. The White House struggled to stay abreast of the Christian right and consulted with the movement's leaders in weekly conference calls. But in many respects, Christian activists led the charge that GOP operatives followed and capitalized upon. This was particularly true of the same-sex marriage issue. One of the most successful tactics of social conservatives -- the ballot referendums against same-sex marriage in 13 states -- bubbled up from below and initially met resistance from White House aides, Christian leaders said. In dozens of interviews since the election, grass-roots activists in Ohio, Michigan and Florida credited President Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, with setting a clear goal that became a mantra among conservatives: To win, Bush had to draw 4 million more evangelicals to the polls than he did in 2000. But they also described a mobilization of evangelical Protestants and conservative Roman Catholics that took off under its own power. In battlegrounds such as Ohio, scores of clergy members attended legal sessions explaining how they could talk about the election from the pulpit. Hundreds of churches launched registration drives, thousands of churchgoers registered to vote, and millions of voter guides were distributed by Christian and antiabortion groups. The rallying cry for many social conservatives was opposition to same-sex marriage. But concern about the Supreme Court, abortion, school prayer and pornography also motivated these "values voters." Same-sex marriage, said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, was "the hood ornament on the family values wagon that carried the president to a second term." Whether evangelical turnout rose nationally this year, and by how much, is unclear. Without question, however, Bush's conservative Christian base was essential to his victory. According to surveys of voters leaving the polls, Bush won 79 percent of the 26.5 million evangelical votes and 52 percent of the 31 million Catholic votes. Turnout soared in conservative areas such as Ohio's Warren County, where Bush picked up 18,000 more votes than in 2000, and local activists said churches were the reason….. Nationally, the backdrop for the mobilization of social conservatives fell into place when Massachusetts's highest court sanctioned same-sex marriage in November. Some Christian leaders perceived not only a threat to biblical morality, but also a winning political issue. Same-sex marriage "is different from abortion," said the Rev. Ronnie Floyd, pastor of First Baptist Church of Springdale, Ark. "It touches every segment of society, schools, the media, television, government, churches. No one is left out."… For several months after the Massachusetts court decision, evangelical leaders lamented the lack of a popular outcry. That changed July 14, when the Senate rejected the federal marriage amendment. Media reports described the vote as "a big election-year defeat" for the White House. It was, in fact, an election-year bonanza. Backers of the amendment clogged the Senate switchboard with calls. Perhaps most important, social conservatives shifted their focus to amending state constitutions. They launched petition drives to put amendments banning same-sex marriage to a popular vote, and those drives resulted in grass-roots organizations and voter lists that later fed the Bush campaign. Ultimately, 13 states approved marriage amendments this year, including 11 on Nov. 2. … The Enlistment of Religious Leaders According to religious leaders, the conference calls with White House officials started early in the Bush administration and became a weekly ritual as the campaign heated up. Usually, the participants were Rove or Tim Goeglein, head of the White House Office of Public Liaison. Later, Bush campaign chairman Ken Mehlman and Ralph Reed, former executive director of the Christian Coalition and the campaign's southeast regional coordinator, were often on the line. The religious leaders varied, but frequent participants included the Rev. Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, psychologist James C. Dobson or others from the Colorado-based Focus on the Family, and Colson…. The Bush campaign enlisted thousands of religious "team leaders" in its canvassing efforts. According to activists in battleground states, however, Christian groups were often out ahead of the campaign…. National religious leaders, and their lawyers, also made a concerted effort to persuade pastors to disregard the warnings of secular groups about what churches can and cannot legally do in the political arena…. Staff writer James V. Grimaldi in Ohio, polling assistant Christopher Muste and researchers Carmen E. Chapin, Madonna A. Lebling and Meg Smith contributed to this report. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32793-2004Nov7?language=printer New York Times - November 4, 2004 Moral values cited as a defining issue of the election By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE Even in a time of war and economic hardship, Americans said they were motivated to vote for President Bush on Tuesday by moral values as much as anything else, according to a survey of voters as they left their polling places. In the survey, a striking portrait of one influential group emerged - that of a traditional, church-going electorate that leans conservative on social issues and strongly backed Mr. Bush in his victory over Senator John Kerry, the Democratic nominee. Mr. Bush appealed overwhelmingly to voters on terrorism and to many others on his ability to handle the economy. But what gave him the edge in the election, which he won 51 percent to 48 percent, was a perceived sense of morality and traditional values. Asked what one issue mattered most to them in choosing a president, "moral values" ranked at the top with the economy/jobs, terrorism and the war in Iraq. Trailing significantly were health care, taxes and education. Of the people who chose "moral values" as their top issue, 80 percent voted for Mr. Bush. (For people who chose the economy/jobs, 80 percent voted for Mr. Kerry.) Nearly one-quarter of the electorate was made up of white evangelical and born-again Christians, and they voted four to one for Mr. Bush. Mr. Bush beat his Democratic opponent in almost all religious categories except among Jews, three-fourths of whom favored Mr. Kerry. But they made up only 3 percent of the electorate. Mr. Bush did particularly well among white Catholics, winning 56 percent of them compared with Mr. Kerry's 43 percent, despite Mr. Kerry's being the first Roman Catholic nominated for president since John F. Kennedy in 1960…. Church attendance remained a strong indicator of political preference. Of those who attend church more than once a week, 61 percent voted for Mr. Bush and 39 percent for Mr. Kerry. Of those who never attend church, the numbers were reversed. Three-quarters of those who want to outlaw abortion in some or all cases voted for Mr. Bush. Four in 10 voters said there should be no recognition of gay and lesbian couples; three-quarters of those voters voted for Mr. Bush…. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/04/politics/campaign/04poll.html?pagewanted=print&position= New York Times - November 4, 2004 Same-sex marriage issue key to some GOP races By JAMES DAO COLUMBUS, Ohio, Nov. 3 - Proposed state constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage increased the turnout of socially conservative voters in many of the 11 states where the measures appeared on the ballot on Tuesday, political analysts say, providing crucial assistance to Republican candidates including President Bush in Ohio and Senator Jim Bunning in Kentucky. The amendments, which define marriage as between only a man and a woman, passed overwhelmingly in all 11 states, clearly receiving support from Democrats and independents as well as Republicans. Only in Oregon and Michigan did the amendment receive less than 60 percent of the vote. But the ballot measures also appear to have acted like magnets for thousands of socially conservative voters in rural and suburban communities who might not otherwise have voted, even in this heated campaign, political analysts said. And in tight races, those voters - who historically have leaned heavily Republican - may have tipped the balance…. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/04/politics/campaign/04gay.html?pagewanted=print&position= Washington Post - November 4, 2004 Need to connect with religious, rural voters noted By David S. Broder The Democratic Party and allied groups waged an expensive and largely effective effort to increase the turnout of urban and minority voters, but Republicans trumped them by finding even more support among white voters outside the cities and inner-ring suburbs -- many of them people for whom religion is a central element. That yielded a quickly emerging consensus yesterday across the Democrats' ideological spectrum that they "have to take the time to understand the concerns of rural families and Christian families," as Clinton White House chief of staff Leon E. Panetta put it. "We cannot ignore the swath of red [Republican] states across the South and Midwest. The party of FDR has become the party of Michael Moore and [his film] 'Fahrenheit 9/11,' and it does not help us in big parts of the country."… Peter D. Hart, one of the Democrats' most respected pollsters, said that if the party is honest with itself, it will acknowledge that for all the improvement in its voter-mobilization efforts, "we came out on the short end again. It goes back to fundamentals. When 40 percent of the voters are regular church-goers and they go for Bush by 20 points, what don't you get? "Bush," he noted, "brings it back again and again to faith. That word turns up over and over in his speeches. We have not been able to connect, as he has, with people's core values. Kerry did a very good job in the debates in talking about his values, but that was the only time." Reticent at the beginning of the campaign to discuss his Roman Catholic faith, Kerry became more open in his comments as time went on. Because the kind of shift Hart and others advocate will not come easily to many Democrats, they are calling for a substantial period of reflection and discussion as the first step in the recovery of their party… http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A23670-2004Nov3?language=printer Washington Post - November 4, 2004 A victory for 'values,' but whose? By Joel Achenbach To understand why America skewed red on Election Day, you might talk to Gary Bauer, the conservative activist, former Republican candidate for president and creator of an organization called Americans United to Preserve Marriage. The group spent a million dollars in Ohio, Michigan and across the country. It warned voters that a nation led by John Kerry might be one in which homosexuals could get married -- and not just two at a time. "Most Americans don't want to sit down and explain to their children why they live in a country where men can marry men, why there's polygamy -- because that would naturally follow, we would argue," Bauer said yesterday. If two men could marry, so could three, four, or more, Bauer said. Moreover, he said, "textbooks could not talk about 'mothers' and 'fathers.' They could only talk about 'parents.' " Not long ago, this might have been considered a somewhat fringe viewpoint, a trifle alarmist -- "polygamy" just isn't something you hear people talking about in Washington political circles -- but gay marriage now seems essential to any conversation about the 2004 election. The exit polls pointed to a huge boost for Republicans from voters who said their biggest concern was "moral values." The term wasn't defined, and Democrats spent much of yesterday protesting that they have morals and values, too. The term is basically a code phrase for abortion and gays. For some people, particularly religious evangelicals, these issues are even more important than Iraq, terrorism, the economy, health care, the environment and education. Moral issues gnaw at the guts of people who think they know right from wrong and normal from sick. The reelection of George W. Bush as the 43rd president of the United States appears to be at least in part because of a fear that liberals favor marital unions among sodomites. Ohio may have lost a couple hundred thousand jobs during the tenure of President Bush, but Kerry, despite all his trips to the state, couldn't turn it from red to blue. Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, another conservative group that spent many hundreds of thousands of dollars on the gay marriage issue, said yesterday that Ohio and Pennsylvania have similar demographics. Bush won Ohio, and Kerry won Pennsylvania. The difference, he argues, was that Ohio's ballot included an amendment to ban gay marriage. "It was these values voters who ushered the president down the aisle to a second term," Perkins said. Even the Republicans didn't see it coming, he said. "People are shocked that it wasn't the war, it wasn't the economy; it was the values issues that generated so much activity in this election." The culture of official Washington doesn't speak the language of Heartland values very fluently, in the same way that a salesman at a John Deere dealership in southern Ohio might not fare so well at the bar of Cafe Milano. So perhaps the Washington culture overestimates the political traction of, say, economic issues, and doesn't fully grasp how angry some people get when the mayor of San Francisco starts passing out marriage licenses to gay couples. To say that we live in an age of Red America would be going too far. Bush won 51 percent of the vote, hardly a landslide, unless you compare it with the last election, where his margin over Al Gore in the popular vote had a negative sign in front of it. There are still blue patches on the coasts and in the big cities and along the crusty shores of the Great Lakes and in scattered college towns across the continent. Some suburbs are purple. But 11 states offered voters a chance to ban gay marriage, and in every state they did so. Gay rights groups spent nearly $3 million to defeat the anti-gay amendment in Oregon and lost by a margin of 57 percent to 43 percent. In Mississippi, 86 percent of voters nixed gay unions…. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A23700-2004Nov3?language=printer The Washington Times – Nov. 4, 2004 Focus on moral values tipped vote for Bush By Joseph Curl and Julia Duin Moral values topped the list of issues voters were most concerned about when they went to the polls on Election Day, with Catholics, evangelicals, blacks and Hispanics joining an ad hoc coalition that re-elected President Bush by 3.5 million votes. Moral issues were highlighted by ballot measures in 11 states to effectively prohibit same-sex "marriage." Voters approved all the measures by solid majorities, ranging from 57 percent in Oregon to 86 percent in Mississippi — and 62 percent in the key state of Ohio. "The overwhelming support that Americans gave to marriage and family issues and the candidates who supported them showed that this is the 'year of the values voter,'" said Gary Bauer, president of American Values and a former presidential candidate. "For too long, liberal political pundits have been telling us that issues like marriage and life divide us as a people. But it's clear that while those issues may be controversial, they are not divisive because people reach across such boundaries as party, economic status and ethnic group to join together to support and protect the American family," Mr. Bauer said. For months on the campaign trail, the president drew the most enthusiastic applause from supporters when he talked about moral values: The "culture of life," a phrase borrowed from Pope John Paul II; the sanctity of marriage; the importance of family; and especially his signing of the partial-birth-abortion ban…. The Christian Defense Coalition yesterday pointed to a strong evangelical and pro-life voter turnout as a key to the president's victory. "It is clear one of the major factors in this presidential race was the strong turnout of the faith and pro-life communities," said the Rev. Patrick Mahoney, director of the coalition. "Moral issues played a major role across the country as witnessed by the fact that all 11 traditional-marriage voter initiatives passed," he said, referring to homosexual "marriage" bans in states from the Deep South to North Dakota. A surprisingly strong bloc of Catholics helped Mr. Bush defeat the first Catholic presidential candidate since John F. Kennedy. According to exit polls, Catholics were 27 percent of the electorate and 51 percent went for the Methodist president — a four percentage point increase in Mr. Bush's Catholic support compared with 2000. The most observant Catholics — those who attend church weekly — supported the president 55 percent to 44 percent. Roman Catholic leaders and lay activists had criticized Mr. Kerry for his pro-choice stance and his vote against the partial-birth-abortion ban. On Sunday, Northern Virginia Catholics received in their church bulletins an insert from Arlington Bishop Paul Loverde that declared: "No Catholic can claim to be a faithful member of the Church while advocating for, or actively supporting, direct attacks on innocent human life." ….. Evangelical Christians handed the White House an overwhelming mandate against abortion, same-sex "marriage" and other issues in the culture wars. "This election demonstrates that Democratic Party leaders have moved far away from the moral consensus in America," said the Rev. Rob Schenck, president of the National Clergy Council. "If they are to reclaim political relevancy, they will need to re-examine their positions on all the major moral issues including the sanctity of human life, the sanctity of marriage and the public acknowledgment of God." Conservatives credited moral issues with boosting Mr. Bush's tally among black and Hispanic voters. The president's share of the Hispanic vote increased from 31 percent in 2000 to 44 percent this year. The shift in the black vote was smaller — from 9 percent four years ago to 11 percent in 2004 — but may have proved decisive in Ohio, the state that ultimately tipped the election to Mr. Bush. Sixteen percent of Ohio blacks — about 90,000 voters — cast their ballots for Mr. Bush, said Matt Daniels, president of Alliance For Marriage, which supported that state's ballot referendum to prohibit same-sex "marriage." If Mr. Bush's black supporters had instead voted for Mr. Kerry, the Democrat would have won Ohio by 40,000, Mr. Daniels said…. http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041104-121419-3786r.htm
|