Traditional values down, but not out

First of a three-part series

The midterm elections that swept congressional Democrats into power sparked fresh obituaries for the religious right.

Are the obituary writers correct? Is the traditional-values movement declining? Has the nation had enough of “moralizing busybodies,” as Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter put it, influencing policy?

In a three-part series, The Washington Times looks at the future of the traditional-values movement, including the status of the abortion debate and the role of women.

According to analysts on the left and right, the traditional-values movement isn’t dead or even dying. In fact, four of its largest groups — Family Research Council Action, Focus on the Family Action, American Values and Alliance Defense Fund — are planning their second “values voters summit” in October.

All 2008 presidential candidates have been invited to the event, which should rival the groups’ first summit, which drew more than 1,700 people in September. That gathering was similar in size to the “Road to Victory” Christian Coalition of America conferences of the 1990s.

This year’s values summit will focus on issues such as the sanctity of life, marriage, religious freedom, bioethics, immigration reform, health care, radical Islam, judicial activism, geopolitics, national security, Hollywood and the press.

Christians and social conservatives are “motivated by issues,” not partisan politics, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins explained at a press breakfast last month sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor. “They have a clear sense of right and wrong, and when they see wrong, they want to correct it.”

Many traditional-values activists think that the 2006 midterm elections were a wake-up call for their movement and that they must do some retrenching and rethinking of its strategies. Major topics of conversation include changes in the movement’s leadership and leadership style; greater outreach to minorities, women, youth and religious voters; and, at least some traditional-values leaders say, political independence.

“The traditionalists have to make their case more clearly and strongly,” said Robert Knight, director of the Culture and Media Institute at the Media Research Center, a conservative watchdog group. “They also can’t be dependent on one political party. They have to be independent. That’s how you have political clout.”

Paul M. Weyrich, founder of the Free Congress Foundation, also thinks the traditional-values movement needs to be politically independent.

Social movements must change because “if you try to keep the movement exactly the way it was, you’ll never succeed,” said Mr. Weyrich, an icon in the conservative movement.

Mr. Weyrich helped organize a “third force” summit held in Washington earlier this month for social conservatives and their allies in the arenas of defense and economics.

The summit’s goal was to get conservatives “on the same wavelength,” Mr. Weyrich told The Times. In the 1960s, he wrote in a December column on the Free Congress Foundation’s Web site, the civil rights coalition was viewed as an independent voice that worked with both Republicans and Democrats “to pull both sides in its direction.”

The traditional-values movement was once such a “third-force” power-broker, and it is time to return to that position and not be “owned” by the Republican Party, Mr. Weyrich said.

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