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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brian P. who wrote (13450)	3/1/2000 8:32:00 PM
From: Zoltan!	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

>>It demonstrates Bauer's integrity. He's guided by principle... What? LOL. Precisely wrong. As Brit Hume and the NR article pointed out, Bauer had approved of McCain's linkage of Robertson and Falwell with Sharpton and Farrakhan. Bauer stood on the stage as the words were delivered. Now, with the fallout, Bauer demands an apology. Just the opposite of integrity. I'll bet Bauer loses his position. >>The hypocrisy of the Religious Right is nauseating. No. Just Bauer's and McCain's. I just watched McCain and Chris Matthews on MSNBC. McCain danced his Clintonesque jig around his lies and his anti-Catholic smear of Bush. Few were buying. But to your point, McCain sat there and embraced your hated Religious Right - all those except Robertson and Falwell. Matthews asked McCain why he embraced Bauer and attacked the other two. The unspoken answer was clear - because the latter supported McCain's opponent. As for me, I'm a libertarian. I never get involved in religious debates because I believe it's a private matter. I don't personally know any member of the Religious Right. But I don't like attacks on the religious from demagogues looking for Media approval or the votes of those who hate that group. I'm also a realist, who'll vote for McCain if he wins the GOP nod because of AlGore and the damage he would do.

To: Brian P. who wrote (13450)	3/3/2000 9:47:00 AM
From: Zoltan!	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769667

>>It demonstrates Bauer's integrity. He's guided by principle, not deals in smoke-filled rooms. Good one. Gigot puts a rest to that joke, detailing Bauer's deal: March 3, 2000 McCain Speaks, And All Heaven Breaks Loose By PAUL A. GIGOT One of John McCain's political charms -- or liabilities, depending on your point of view -- is that he isn't afraid to shoot from the lip. This Monday he drew his microphone, fired at Pat Robertson and hit Gary Bauer right between the eyes. Too bad Mr. Bauer is Mr. McCain's man, while Mr. Robertson supports George W. Bush. Yet by Wednesday it was Mr. Bauer who was demanding that Mr. McCain apologize -- to Mr. Robertson, no less. This is what can happen when your campaign is a night at the Improv. It's also a study in the perils of political kingmaking, and of letting personal rivalries get the better of you. Not too long ago Mr. Bauer imagined himself as the new leader of America's social conservatives, supplanting long-time rivals Ralph Reed and Mr. Robertson. Now he's scrambling to retrieve whatever credibility he has left on the right. This isn't what Mr. Bauer imagined while plotting his own presidential run. He'd built the Family Research Council into a political force, but he always got second billing to Mr. Reed. With the former Christian Coalition boss now a capitalist, and Mr. Robertson in political decline, Mr. Bauer saw his chance to be the next Bigfoot. "He wanted to run, and I said he could bring some issues to the table," recalls Bill Kristol, the magazine editor who sometimes advises Mr. Bauer. "I thought he really would be a better leader for social conservatives than Ralph or Robertson." But he flopped as a candidate. Mr. Bauer spent most of his time running as Buchanan Lite on economics. He campaigned against China trade in Iowa, home of exporting farmers. Mr. Bauer finished south of Alan Keyes, and was showing up at 1% in South Carolina polls when he dropped out. Which is when Mr. McCain came calling. The Arizona senator needed cover on his social right, so once again Mr. Bauer hashed things out with Mr. Kristol. They figured he'd get little credit for joining Team Bush; Messrs. Reed and Robertson were there first. But if he endorsed Mr. McCain and the senator won, Mr. Bauer would be a heavy hitter once again. "There's a gamble, but it gives him a bigger jump out of the box," Mr. Kristol, a McCain sympathizer himself, said at the time. Mr. Bauer won't comment, but a source close to him says he also got assurances that Mr. McCain would name a pro-life running mate. What he didn't expect was that the sulfuric senator would declare war on other Christian political leaders. The first time Mr. Bauer read Mr. McCain's reverse-jihad speech was on the plane to its delivery Monday in Virginia Beach. The man who would be kingmaker expressed alarm, and was invited to edit the text. So he added sentences to distinguish between Christian leaders and the rank and file. He also added lines separating Mr. Robertson and Jerry Falwell ("agents of intolerance") from Chuck Colson and James Dobson ("I stand with them"). This last edit made sense for Mr. Bauer, because Mr. Dobson was his former mentor. But it was dissonant for Mr. McCain, because Mr. Dobson is even less tolerant of political compromise than is Mr. Robertson and has attacked Mr. McCain personally. The odd distinction made Mr. McCain's speech seem more a political Hail Mary than a stand on principle. Mr. Bauer played the good soldier for a couple of days. "Governor Bush came awfully close to suggesting that what Senator McCain is doing is attacking Christian conservatives. He's not doing that at all," Mr. Bauer told CNN on Monday. But two days later Mr. Bauer issued a statement asking Mr. McCain to retract his "unwarranted, ill-advised and divisive attacks on certain religious leaders . . . Senator McCain must not allow his personal differences with any individual to cloud his judgment." What happened? All heaven broke loose at the Christian grass roots. Conservatives voted in droves against Mr. McCain in both Virginia and Washington. "He misjudged how that world works," says one McCain insider. "What happens is that, as Steve Forbes found out in 1996, if you call Pat Robertson a toothy flake, social conservatives think you're also talking about them." The reaction only got worse when Mr. McCain called his foes "forces of evil." That triggered an internal campaign revolt leading to Mr. Bauer's repudiation, as well as public distancing by Arizona Rep. J.D. Hayworth on PBS's "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer." Mr. McCain apologized, albeit only for the "evil" rhetoric: He says he was joking, a claim belied by the fury his aides say he truly feels at Mr. Robertson's campaign attacks. Perhaps, as the McCain campaign hopes, all of this will cause a backlash to this week's backlash and help him win New York and California Tuesday. But if the war hero does lose, one reason will be that he picked one too many needless fights with fellow Republicans. As Bill Bennett advised him in January, Mr. McCain's "reform" pitch and biography had already given him an independent allure. What he needed to do was to reassure GOP conservatives. Instead he trashed tax-cutters as selfish and social conservatives as intolerant. He's single-handedly made George Bush a conservative hero. interactive.wsj.com