Conservatives Groan About Debates

W A S H I N G T O N, Oct. 7, 2000 -- Texas Gov. George W. Bush has lavished running mate Dick Cheney with praise for his debate performance, even as rumblings from conservatives offered a much different view of the former defense secretary’s face-off against Democratic vice-presidential nominee Joseph Lieberman.

What ruffled some on the Republican right were comments from the GOP ticket’s No. 2 man on two hot-button social issues: The recently approved abortion pill, RU-486 and civil rights for homosexuals.

Asked whether he supported House Republican efforts to restrict distribution of RU-486, Cheney began by echoing comments Bush made in Tuesday’s first presidential debate. If elected, Bush had said, there would be nothing he could do to reverse the FDA’s approval of the drug.

“I haven’t looked in particular at that particular piece of legislation,” Cheney said in the vice-presidental debate.

The comments seemed to represent backpedaling from a campaign that had signaled that if Congress passed a bill overriding the FDA’s decision to legalize the abortion pill, Bush would probably sign it.

But their failure to make a firm pledge to overturn the FDA ruling raised the ire of some longtime “pro-life” activists, like Republican National Coaltion for Life’s Colleen Parro.

Parro says she received a message from a friend in Austin who is an ”active” Republican saying, “I just don’t see how pro-life people can stay in the Republican Party. These people have no intention of committing to do anything to protecting the lives of these babies.”

GOP’s Commitment Questioned

As for Bush’s assertion that there is nothing to be done now that the pill is approved, Parro said, “I can’t believe he doesn’t know the powers of the presidency when it comes to federal agencies so I just have to think he avoided it … If it is not ignorance, it is devious.”

Parro was not the only one with eyebrows raised. Conservative Christian leader and former presidential candidate Gary Bauer expressed disappointment with both Bush and Cheney in a memo sent to fellow activists on Friday, noting that at no time in either debate “was the sanctity of life position explained and there was continued surrender on RU-486 and Supreme Court justices.”

However, the National Right to Life Committee, which endorsed Bush in the primary season, sees things differently. The group issued a statement Wednesday praising Bush’s comments on the issue, saying the Texas governor was “correct when he stated that the president of the United States cannot unilaterally overturn an FDA decision.”

Talking points put out by the organization noted “Bush stated during the debate that he was disappointed in the FDA’s decision and that he feared it would lead to more abortions” and quoted a New York Post article asserting that a “spokesman for the Bush campaign is on record” stating that if Congress passed a ban, “Bush would sign it.”

In an interview on Friday, one state leader active in the organization said her group knows Bush is committed to “pro-life” principles and called the story that he is not doing enough to prove his bona fides on the issue “a complete media fabrication.”

‘GOP’s Gay Bombshell’

Another issue keeping the phone lines buzzing in social conservative circles: Cheney’s answer to a question about constitutional rights for gay couples.

Said Cheney, “I think different states are likely to come to different conclusions and that’s appropriate. I don’t think there should necessarily be a federal policy in this area … I try to be open-minded about it as much as I can and tolerant of those relationships. And like Joe, I also wrestle with the extent to which there ought to be legal sanction of those relationships. I think we ought to do everything we can to tolerate and accommodate whatever kind of relationships people want to enter into.”

The New York Post picked up on these comments on Friday, writing about them in a commentary piece under the screaming headline: “GOP’S Gay Bombshell a Blow to Conservatives.”

The Post was hardly alone. Texas Eagle Forum’s Cathie Adams said that at her debate party last night, “there was a moan in the crowd” when Cheney gave his answer to the query.

Another leader in the religious conservative movement said he was “utterly disgusted” with Cheney’s answer, and called it “a total abandonment” of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a measure that became law in 1996 preventing federal recognition of same-sex marriage, and said now “we have been told our choice is now between a gay rights express train and a handcar on the same track.”

Election Day Depression?

Longtime conservative activist Chuck Donovan, speaking on his own behalf, not as a representative of the Family Research Council for which he works, said e-mails on the issue were flying on Friday. Donovan said he still hoped “there would be some correction of course.” If that reassurance doesn’t come sometime in the next few days, Donovan said, “I think that the grace period that some of the [pro-family] groups have given will probably dissipate,” a development he thinks “would have a potentially depressing effect on turnout” come November.

Bauer’s letter echoed these feelings. “There can be no ‘politically smart’ explanation for the answer,” he wrote. “More importantly, morally the answer given last night is a disaster. Children need a mother and a father. Marriage between one man and one woman is God’s ordained institution. A nation or a state can’t trifle with it unless they are willing to be judged by God for it.”

Others in the movement, however, said they saw no problem with the answer, and noted that some of Cheney’s openness to the idea of some sort of state-sanctioned union might derive from the fact that his daughter and trusted campaign adviser, Mary Cheney, is a lesbian.

Rev. Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition says he continues to be very excited about the Bush/Cheney ticket, and says conservative religious activists have absolutely nothing to worry about when it comes to their social beliefs. Both men, he says, are right on the issues that matter to pro-family Christian leaders.