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By Bill Berkowitz
Out on the campaign trail, George W. Bush is hotfooting his way back to the center. Almost every day, he's either hawking a new education proposal, reassuring Catholics that his Bob Jones University speech was all just a big misunderstanding, or opening up the big tent for a meeting with a selected group of gay Republicans. All of this is being done to recapture last fall's halcyon days when Dubya was the king of "compassionate conservatism."
Now that Bush has sewn up the nomination - thanks to a surge of support from the Christian right - his brain trust wants to distance the governor from leaders like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and Lou Sheldon. But the ambitious Election 2000 campaigns that this trio have in the works could make the path toward the center a pretty rocky road.
Bill Berkowitz is the editor of Culturewatch (www.igc.org/culturewatch), a monthly publication tracking the religious right and related movements.
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In These Times ©
2000
Vol. 24, No. 13 |