The G.O.P.'s Troublemaker

By JAMES CARNEY/WASHINGTON

For the Republican Party, the Christian right has been a blessing and a curse. It mobilizes millions of voters but alienates a lot of others. In Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed, the G.O.P. had a baby-faced, backroom-working pol who wasn't averse to cutting deals with the party's more secular factions. The new leader of the party's Christian troops is Gary Bauer, the longtime president of the pro-life Family Research Council, and all he has in common with Reed is a baby face. "I'm more comfortable pushing from the outside," he says. Translation: he's not averse to bringing down the G.O.P. ship.

Which is what could happen in California this week. Bauer has inserted himself into a battle between two Republicans in a special election for a House seat in Santa Barbara. The district is made up mostly of fiscally conservative, socially moderate Republicans, which is why Speaker Newt Gingrich was backing Brooks Firestone, an heir to the family tire business who became a winemaker and, since 1994, a moderate, pro-choice state assemblyman. But a furious Bauer ponied up $100,000 for an ad campaign that zings Firestone for his refusal to back a ban on partial-birth abortions and promotes instead the more conservative underdog, state assemblyman Tom Bordonaro. (The ads created a stir when local network affiliates refused to run them, saying they described the procedure too graphically.) The Firestone-Bordonaro infighting has been so damaging that some Republicans fear that Lois Capps, the sole Democrat in Tuesday's open primary, could top 50% in the three-way race and take the once safe G.O.P. seat outright. To charges that he is spoiling the G.O.P.'s chances, Bauer rebuts, "Should Lincoln have supported a pro-slavery Republican in order to win a House seat?"

O.K., say Bauer's opponents, but what if the stakes are higher: the whole Congress? Abortion has long divided the Republican Party, and divided parties lose elections. When the 165 members of the Republican National Committee gather for their annual winter meeting this week in Palm Springs, Calif., they'll have a stink bomb on their hands--a resolution that would prohibit the R.N.C. from funding any candidate not opposed to partial-birth abortion. Bauer didn't write the resolution, but his politics inspired it. "This isn't a matter of ideology, it's a matter of human decency," says Colleen Parro, director of the Republican National Coalition for Life. "The Republican Party should only support candidates with a fundamental respect for human life."

That sounds sensible enough for a party with a pro-life plank in its platform, but G.O.P. leaders are worried that the resolution would set a precedent for imposing litmus tests on its candidates. It would be especially damaging to the G.O.P. in the Northeast, where pro-choicers like New Jersey Governor Christine Whitman, who vetoed a partial-birth abortion ban, are already struggling to be heard over the party's dominant wing of Southern conservatives. Concerned that the resolution might pass, R.N.C. chairman Jim Nicholson took the unusual step last week of publicly urging committee members to vote no. Quoting Ronald Reagan, Nicholson wrote, "Those who agree with us 80% of the time are our allies, not our foes."

But Bauer lives for these showdowns. He challenged the G.O.P.'s once sacred support of free trade by joining a coalition of liberals in last year's high-profile campaign against renewal of China's most-favored-nation trade status. And he confounded both the country-club set and free-market purists by defending government-run Social Security against talk of privatization and pushing a $500-per-child tax credit over breaks for corporations in last summer's budget deal.

The problem Bauer poses for the party is that it can't afford to ignore his bomb throwing. Like Reed, who gave the Christian Coalition a powerful national voice, Bauer has transformed the Family Research Council from an organization with a 3,000-member mailing list and a $200,000 budget into one with 455,000 members and a $14 million budget. And like Reed, who had Pat Robertson as his backer, Bauer has the widely followed radio evangelist Rev. James Dobson behind him. With Reed off the stage in Atlanta as a political consultant and Gingrich obsessing about tax cuts, Christian activists have reason to feel ignored. "They feel they helped elect a Republican majority and didn't get a lot in return," says Reed.

That's where Bauer comes in, although his tactics do limit his influence inside the Beltway. Gingrich doesn't consult him, and neither does Senate majority leader Trent Lott. Which is why, to the dismay of candidates like Pat Buchanan who hoped to woo his followers, Bauer is now talking about running for President. That would be the ultimate outsider's strategy.