Dobson's Choice
The historian Robert
Conquest has two laws of politics, which are recorded in Kingsley Amis'
Memoirs . The first is that, "generally speaking, everybody is
reactionary on the subjects he knows about." The second is "every organization
appears to be headed by secret agents of its opponents."
Conquest
Rule No. 2 applies nicely to the recent activities of Focus on the Family, an
organization of the religious right run by the radio evangelist and family
counselor James Dobson. Those on the irreligious left describe Dobson as the
most powerful leader of Christian conservatives active today. But lately, his
behavior seems as if it were scripted by his antagonists, People for the
American Way and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.
About two months ago, Dobson began saying in private that
the failure of House Republicans to take his family-values agenda seriously
might impel him to lead a mass walkout from the party. He delivered that
démarche to a meeting of House Republicans in the basement of the Capitol on
March 18. Dobson told GOP leaders that they must act on a range of
social-conservative issues, such as abortion, gay rights, and school prayer--or
else. Unsatisfied with their response, Dobson went public with a series of
unusual interviews in the secular media. Dobson's face appeared on the cover of
U.S. News & World Report , below a headline that read, in part, "Now,
he has decided the Republican Party must convert or be brought down." On
Meet the Press , he said that evangelical Christians who put the
Republicans in control of Congress in 1994 had been "insulted" and
"disrespected" ever since. Asked about the consequences of a walkout, Dobson
told Tim Russert, "It would be the Democrats in the White House and the
Congress, so that would be unfortunate. But you never take a hill unless you're
willing to die on it. And we will die on this hill if necessary."
Republican
leaders are furious with Dobson over these comments, and for good reason. By
blackmailing them so openly, he is telling them, in effect, to choose their
poison. The GOP can either show Dobson the door, or it can try to move his
radical agenda, which calls for, among other things, abolition of the
Department of Education and a constitutional amendment to ban abortion. If
Republicans stiff him, they may lose a crucial component of their narrow
majority. If, on the other hand, they "convert," they get to watch moderates
and economic conservatives flee in horror. In sending a message that the party
can't take its conservative base for granted, Dobson also sends a signal to the
electorate as a whole: Republicans are being ordered around by a frightening
religious zealot.
Dobson, 62, is less well known than Jerry
Falwell or Pat Robertson and far more powerful than either of them. Born in
Shreveport, La., he is descended from three generations of Nazarene ministers.
But Dobson did not become ordained as a minister himself. Instead, he took a
Ph.D. from the University of Southern California in child developmental
psychology. His book Dare to Discipline , published in 1970, turned him
into a kind of conservative Dr. Spock, as he has often been described,
eventually selling more than 2 million copies. In 1977, Dobson used the book as
a platform to found Focus on the Family, a nonprofit organization based in
Colorado Springs, Colo. Focus on the Family dispenses family counseling over an
800 number and sponsors Dobson's daily radio broadcast, in which he serves up
advice on marriage and child-rearing along with condemnations of "humanism," a
philosophy he equates with all forms of social permissiveness. The program,
which is heard on 2,000 stations, has helped Dobson develop a mailing list of
more than 2 million names.
Over the
past decade, he has become more and more explicitly political. In 1988, Dobson
set up the Washington-based Family Research Council, headed by his ally Gary
Bauer, a former Reagan administration official. Bauer is to Dobson as Ralph
Reed until recently was to Pat Robertson. Focus on the Family and the Family
Research Council are now technically separate, but they work hand in glove.
Both raised a ruckus in 1995 when party chairman Haley Barbour ventured the
notion that Republicans could be a "Big Tent" party on abortion. The two
threatened to walk out of the Republican National Convention if the GOP
modified its uncompromising anti-abortion plank or if Bob Dole picked a
pro-choice running mate such as Colin Powell.
This absolutism contrasted with the stance of the rival
Christian Coalition. Under Reed's leadership, the Christian Coalition was more
politically savvy, more open to compromise with the nonreligious right, and
more accepting of the reality that Republican victory was a prerequisite for
any kind of conservative change. Reed recognized that his power depended on not
demanding constant satisfaction from the party. Thus, in 1996 Reed threw his
weight behind Dole early in the primary season and flirted with the idea of
accepting modified language on abortion in the GOP platform. For this, Dobson
and Bauer denounced him as a power-hungry sellout.
With Reed
gone into private political consulting, the Christian Coalition has been
eclipsed by Bauer and Dobson. Of late, they have been involving themselves in
congressional races, to the chagrin of the national party. Bauer spent $250,000
in support of Tom Bordonaro, a conservative who defeated the Republican
National Committee-approved moderate in a special election primary in
California. Bordonaro then lost to the Democrat, Lois Capps. Dobson, who has
seldom made political endorsements in the past, recently backed ex-Rep. Bob
Dornan, the well-known ultracon wacko, against a moderate Republican in an
upcoming congressional primary. Party regulars worry that the same thing may
happen again--Dornan will win the nomination and lose to the incumbent
Democrat, Loretta Sanchez, in November.
Is Dobson a menace to freedom? Liberals try to
play it both ways. They love to argue that the religious right controls the
Republican Party. But they also maintain that Christian conservatives are
extreme and marginal. In fact, Dobson does have power, but it's of a kind that
depends on subtlety and patience, qualities he tends to lack. To the extent he
can align himself with something resembling majority opinion--on an issue like
partial-birth abortion or opposition to the marriage penalty--he may get
somewhere. But to push his further agenda, he threatens to do to the GOP what
Democratic interest groups did to their party in the 1970s and 1980s--that is,
drag it down to principled defeat.
Indeed, in what Dobson is
now doing there is an echo of Jesse Jackson's past threats to bolt the
Democratic Party if he and his views weren't accorded more "respect." Appeasing
Jackson--the Mondale/Dukakis strategy--was far less effective than confronting
him--the Clinton strategy. The risk of alienating a voting base is real, but
the risk of looking like a prisoner to the ultras is greater. Most people don't
want to vote for a party that constantly succumbs to extortion from an extreme
faction. You might expect James Dobson, a child psychologist, to understand how
this works.
