Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Gary Bauer talks about why he's running for president.
Nov 8, 1999 | In late January Gary Bauer was riding high. The anti-abortion headmaster of the Republican Party had just won the first major GOP straw poll of Republican presidential candidates.
The poll was held at the Conservative Political Action Committee conference, the annual mecca for what there is of a vast right-wing conspiracy. (The buttons that said as much were a hot item at the conference, as were those suggesting "Lorena Bobbit for White House Intern.")
It was apparent even then that the world would soon be seeing a kinder, gentler Gary Bauer. The former head of the socially conservative Family Research Council wanted to use the C-PAC venue to transform his activist credentials into Republican primary votes and knew he that to do so he would need to attract more than just angry white males.
Bauer shocked many Washington Republicans when he decided to support competitor Sen. John McCain's campaign finance reform proposal. And in October he shocked everyone when he held a press conference to dispel a rumor that he was having an affair with a young campaign aide. This bizarre event attracted national media attention to what otherwise would have been nothing more than standard political insider gossip.
But no. Suddenly, Bauer was spewing lines straight out of Ms. magazine, saying he couldn't "imagine that anybody on the campaign would object to me having meetings behind closed doors with professional women." Now every chance he gets he repeats his favorite new phrase: he now has a glass door to connect his office to the outside world because "there are no glass ceilings in my campaign."
Yet despite a fourth-place showing at the Iowa straw poll in August that suggested he was the emerging Christian conservative candidate to beat, Bauer now trails George W. Bush by 45 percentage points in most national polls and is still struggling to redefine himself as a mainstream candidate.
When asked if he's the true Christian conservative candidate, he immediately takes exception. "I'm running as a conservative. It's puzzling to me why observers want to mention my faith in describing me," he says. "I believe everybody I'm running against in the Republican Party goes to church on Sunday and says they're Christian."
"There is no religious test [to run for] for office in America. The Constitution specifically prohibits it," he continues. "I think voters will vote for me or against me depending on whether or not they agree with my China policy, my tax policy, what I think on abortion and so forth. How I worship is really none of their business."
That's quite a contrast to the speech he gave last April announcing his candidacy, in which he directly linked the bloodshed at Columbine High School to the crumbling of religious values in America.
"When you have a society where you're no longer telling many of your kids that they're created by God," he said, "that their liberty comes from him, that virtue matters and death is never an option, whether it's an unborn baby or settling a fight. I don't think we can be surprised when we get the kind of horrible pictures and scenes that we increasingly see."
Distancing yourself from your core group of supporters is quite a dangerous campaign strategy for primaries season. This early on, candidates usually work hard to keep their supporter base happy. Elizabeth Dole is exhibit A as to what happens if you don't have a base of support beyond couch-loving Rosie O'Donnell fans. The money dries up and then you crash.
In fact, Bauer owes his staying power to a core group of evangelical activists who have donated time and money to his campaign. They're just as passionate about their politics as they are about their sermons. To those core supporters, Bauer is a true hero for his anti-abortion work.
So why does he seem to be publicly backing away from them?
It's obvious he's trying to do everything he can to broaden his supporter base, which makes sense. But what he really needs to do is light a fire under die-hard Christian conservative voters, early on, in New Hampshire and Iowa, where, to everyone's surprise, Pat Robertson finished second behind Bob Dole in the 1988 caucus. Bauer's political franchise is built on Christian conservatism, and that's where he's most likely to succeed.
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