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Three months ago, Democratic leaders, buoyed by a humming economy and a popular President, envisioned recapturing the House of Representatives with a swing of 11 seats in the November 3 midterm election.

While pre-election polls show Americans continue to approve of the way President Clinton is handling his job—especially the economy—the release last month of independent counsel Kenneth Starr's report to Congress outlining 11 reasons for impeachment based on the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal has acutely deflated Democratic hopes of gaining in Congress.

Indeed, pollsters are predicting disillusioned voters will stay away in droves. But Alan Secrest, president of Cooper and Secrest, one of the nation's largest Democratic polling firms, says, "The angrier voters are, the more likely they are to turn out." He predicts those few who do end up at the polls will be voting with raw emotions.

John C. Green, director of the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron, estimates that less than a third of the electorate will vote, making it one of the lowest turnouts ever. Conservative Christians, who tend overwhelmingly to vote Republican, could tip the balance in tight races, resulting in a considerable gain for the GOP in Congress. While polls indicate moral issues are suddenly a priority for the electorate, Republicans run the risk of overplaying their hand and causing a voter backlash.

As the Clinton scandal has unfolded, the organizations that form the backbone of the Religious Right are in flux. The Christian Coalition has retooled since wunderkind Ralph Reed left to become a political consultant last year. Focus on the Family's James Dobson, after clashing with top Republicans earlier this year, suffered a mild stroke in June, blunting his public threat to leave the GOP fold unless Republican leaders refocused on the pro-family agenda. And Family Research Council (FRC) president Gary Bauer, mulling a year 2000 presidential bid, last month began running television commercials in Iowa calling on Clinton to resign.

GRASSROOTS STRENGTH: Despite changing faces and evolving roles at the top of several organizations, some believe the best days of the Religious Right are ahead.

Reed, now an Atlanta-based election consultant, told CHRISTIANITY TODAY, "The strength of the religious conservative movement has never been its leadership, but its grassroots." Reed, 36, says, "The names and the faces of leaders may change, but what never changes is the fact that there are 20 to 30 million committed, devout, conservative people of faith who are deeply concerned about the moral direction of our country."

But has the GOP earned the everlasting loyalty of religious conservatives? Christian conservatives in Congress and state legislatures have few achievements to show to their supporters. The U.S. Senate, state and federal courts, and the White House have in different ways blocked conservative initiatives on taxes, abortion, and religious persecution.

Nevertheless, Randy Tate, the Christian Coalition executive director, suspects that organizational skills will tip the scales in close races. "It isn't going to be tv and radio ads and attack pieces coming through the mail," he says. "It's going to be which organizations are motivated and can turn out their supporters."

The struggle between fiscal and social conservatives rages on within the Republican party. Some GOP operatives try to avoid discussing social issues; yet they realize turnout among grassroots Christian conservatives will be higher than in the nation as a whole. Thus, after 18 months of inactivity, congressional Republicans finally began to act on moral issues over the summer. But the GOP would rather stick to economic issues. A National Republican Congressional Committee "critical issues survey" mailed in July contained questions on government spending, tax hikes, the irs, government waste, crime, and a balanced budget amendment, but nothing on abortion, homosexuality, school prayer, or the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Representative J. C. Watts (R-Okla.), the only black Republican in Congress, says such a strategy may backfire. "If you wait until six months before an election to bring up family issues, what's the Christian community going to think?"

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October 26 1998, Vol. 42, No. 12