Church Bingo
By: Scott Shuger
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The WP and NYT lead with John McCain's speech yesterday attacking the leadership of the Christian right. "We are the party of Ronald Reagan not Pat Robertson," McCain is quoted as saying. "We are the party of Abraham Lincoln not Bob Jones." USAT's front is dominated by a big takeout on the GOP party war but the lead is the Treasury Department's new determination to target illegal corporate tax shelters, a story that the WP off-leads and the NYT fronts. The LAT lead is that INS field agents initially objected to helping the LAPD fight gangs by detaining illegal immigrants, a practice the LAPD is prevented by city regulations from engaging in directly. McCain's speech is the paper's top national story. The speech is in the number 2 spot in the WSJ's world-wide news box, topped only by Austrian right-winger J”rg Haider's resignation from the leadership of his party, a story that USAT also fronts, but that the others stuff.
The papers all report that McCain's speech, coming as it did in the heart of religiously conservative Virginia, was lions' den stuff, but only the Post notes that McCain was actually speaking in Pat Robertson's hometown. The immediate tactical point of the speech, the papers agree, was to keep George W. Bush mired in an association with the most unreconstructed of the religious right, while the strategic point was to attract moderates in crucial non-Southern Super Tuesday states. The LAT says the speech was a "enormous gamble" in that in many states Christian conservatives cast a third of more of the GOP primary votes. The paper quotes an unnamed senior Bush advisor's reaction: "This is more than just a throw of the dice....This is a little bit of a burning down of the Republican Party on the way out."
Although McCain also condemned Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan in his remarks, none of the papers mention that in their headlines. A WSJ commentary wonders when the press will ask Bill Bradley and Al Gore to disavow Democratic extremists like Sharpton.
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