Friday 3 September 2004 By Evelyn Nieves Page A23

The Religious Right, Out of the Spotlight


NEW YORK, 2 Sept. - Outside the New Yorker Hotel, more than the usual
Midtown madness claimed the streets.

Clutches of police officers directed traffic, camera crews plowed through
the morning crush of nine-to-fivers, and protesters gathering for their
first rallies of the day. A clean-cut young man holding a "Save Our
Soldiers, Re-Defeat Bush" sign argued with a bearded man in Muslim robes
over a favored spot on the southwest corner of Eighth Avenue.

"I was here first !" the young man said. "No, you weren't !" the other
shot back.

But above all that, in a third-floor meeting room of the New Yorker, there
was peace, blissful peace.

The 9 a.m. prayer service had started.

The daily sessions, open to all participants of the Republican National
Convention, being held across the street at Madison Square Garden, drew a
dozen people Thursday morning.

Janet Parshall, a conservative radio host of a syndicated three-hour daily
talk show, led the group. She led prayers for President Bush to win and
prayers for those who mock the religious right. When she asked those
gathered if they had any special prayers, one man asked for a prayer for
"an angry protester" who had confronted him the day before, and another
asked for a prayer that he, as an elected politician, be given the grace
to separate human laws from the laws of the Lord.

It was all over in an hour. But the prayer session -- sponsored by the
National Federation of Republican Assemblies, a conservative group that
bills itself as "the Republican wing of the Republican Party" -- was just
one example of the way religious conservatives who are a key part of
Bush's base have been finding a way to keep the faith in Manhattan this
week.

Sure, their voices have been muted during prime-time speeches aimed at
moderate undecided voters watching the GOP show on television. And for a
Republican Party trying to win a tight election, it made perfect sense : A
recent Zogby poll found that 60 percent of undecided voters believe that a
president should keep religious values separate from politics; only 29
percent wanted their president to emphasize religious values.

But the number of undecided voters is much smaller than it has been in
several election cycles -- just 3 percent of likely voters, according to a
new Washington Post-ABC News poll. So organizers at this convention have
been finding ways to appeal to members of the Christian conservative base
who will be dispatched to knock on doors, register voters and get out the
vote this November.

Throughout the convention schedule, all week, God was in the details.

The Republicans have held prayer services and more prayer services. Former
representative J.C. Watts (Okla.) held a prayer breakfast for 700 people
at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, with White House Chief of Staff
Andrew H. Card Jr. as the featured speaker. The Republican National
Committee staged a "Catholic outreach event" at the Westin Times Square
hotel featuring RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie and columnist Peggy Noonan.
Antiabortion activists held a luncheon featuring Phyllis Schlafly and
others on the right, including Ann Coulter.

Ralph Reed, a Bush campaign strategist and former executive director of
the Christian Coalition, told The Washington Post in an interview Thursday
that prime-time speakers discussed faith in their own way. "I thought
Senator Miller addressed it last night," he said of the keynote address by
Sen. Zell Miller (D-Ga.), which invoked God several times. "And I thought
Laura Bush certainly touched on it thematically."

But the most prominent occasion for religious discussion was an
invitation-only rally for the conservative faithful Tuesday afternoon. The
rally was organized by the Bush-Cheney campaign, which is mindful that the
4 million evangelical Christians who sat out the election in 2000 could
put the president in the win column if they vote this time around.

The "Family, Faith and Freedom Rally," at the Waldorf-Astoria, invited
more than 1,000 social conservatives to discuss forging a conservative
agenda in the next four years, including ways to ban same-sex marriage and
curb abortion. It reminded the faithful in an invitation that Bush is
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More :
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57346-2004Sep2.html?referrer%
3Demail

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2004/09/01/notes090104.DTL&nl=f
ix

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2004/09/03/notes090304.DTL&nl=f
ix

Why Won't Dubya Apologize ? Botched 9/11 info, two botched wars, a gutted
economy, global scorn. Why can't GW be a man ?
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2004/04/21/notes042
104.DTL