Simmering anger may drive religious right back to polls

Angry over health care reform and the abortion fight it reinvigorated, worried about the expansion of gay rights and frustrated by President Obama’s criticisms of Israel, religious conservatives are eager to play a key role in the outcome of the 2010 midterm elections.

But many are also not sold on the Republican Party, and analysts are wondering whether some of them will sit out November’s elections - something religious conservatives have done in the past when neither party appealed to their interests.

“There certainly seems to be a lot of anecdotal evidence that the Christian right is more energized this year,” said Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council in Washington. “But I don’t think that’s necessarily a windfall for the Republicans.”

Mr. Perkins said conservative Christians - as well as Orthodox Jews and abortion opponents - are unhappy with Mr. Obama and looking for change; yet sizing up candidates who can deliver is another matter.

“The Republicans could be that change,” Mr. Perkins said. “But in a lot of ways, they are not there yet.”

Strategists said religious conservatives stayed away from the polls on Election Day in 1996, when Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole failed to inspire them.

Karl Rove, who was a political adviser to President George W. Bush, said he thinks millions of conservatives who otherwise would have backed Mr. Bush stayed home in 2000 after news broke just before the election that Mr. Bush had been arrested in the 1970s for drunken driving.

Gary L. Bauer, president of the pro-life group American Values, predicts a simmering intensity among values voters. He said “hyphenated conservatives” who accepted Mr. Obama in the last election cycle are dumbfounded by the president’s hard tack left and repulsed by runaway spending.

“It’s almost like we’re witnessing a complete mirror image of 2008, when all the passion was among young voters, minorities and first-time voters,” said Mr. Bauer. “Now that energy is with conservatives and older voters. … There’s tremendous intensity out there.”

Mr. Bauer, a former presidential candidate who served in the Reagan administration, said values voters consider Mr. Obama an apologist and not a defender of the United States, and dislike “his questioning whether we’re even a Judeo-Christian nation.”

But the most galvanizing issue working against any Democrat or Republican who voted for health care reform is abortion, Mr. Bauer said.

During the president’s first week in office, in January 2009, he reversed a Bush administration ban on aid to international family planning groups that promote abortion.

“That same week he issued the order to close Guantanamo [Bay prison]. We learned then that he cared more about the rights of jihadists than he did about the rights of unborn babies,” Mr. Bauer said.

Abortion is also at the forefront of concerns for the Colorado-based Focus on the Family.

Tom Minnery, senior vice president for Focus’ Citizen Link, said his group hasn’t endorsed candidates for the fall but plans to be involved.

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