I will discuss more details of this in subsequent essays. But for today, I want to underscore the way that the Christian Right is first, an electoral movement, not a "values" or even a "religious" movement.

If we are going to be able to have coherent and appropriate conversations about what to do, we have to have some rough common understandings of what we are up against.

Here are a few excerpts from my original expose of the Christian Coalition's electoral plans that I learned when I attended the founding national strategy conference, undercover, in 1989. The article appeared in Church and State magazine, and is archived at Theocracy Watch, along with many other articles documenting the electoral strategy and activities of the Christian Coalition.

When I slipped into the national leadership meeting of Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition, I thought I knew what to expect. I'd written many stories about the Religious Right. But I was unprepared for what I saw, heard and felt inside Robertson's Virginia Beach, Va., headquarters for two days in November during the "Road to Victory" Conference and Strategy Briefing. ...

I was also surprised to see a rapidly growing, technologically sophisticated religio-political organization, built largely from Robertson's 1988 presidential campaign. Christian Coalition activists are working to take over the Republican Party from the grassroots up, while electing right-to-life conservative Christian Republicans to public office at all levels...

Much of the Virginia Beach conference consisted of "how to" presentations on the mechanics of electoral and internal Republican Party politics. One session was divided into regional briefings on how to become delegates to the Republican National Convention. There was a single caucus for how to become a delegate to the Democratic Convention, but no one came. At this gathering, I quickly learned, a denunciation of "the liberals" usually referred to George Bush, California Gov. Pete Wilson and the Republican National Committee. "The far left" meant the Democratic Party. One panel titled "Turning Out the Christian Vote in 1992" presented two field-tested election tactics: voter identification ("voter ID") programs and "voters' guides."

"We don't have to worry about convincing a majority of Americans to agree with us," declared Guy Rodgers, the Coalition's national field director. "Most of them are staying home and watching `Falcon Crest."'

"Even in a high turn-out presidential election year," Rodgers explained, "only 15 percent of the eligible voters determine the outcome. Of all eligible adults, only about 60 percent are actually registered. Only half of those cast ballots. So," he continued, "only 30 percent of the eligible voters actually vote. Therefore, only 15 percent of the eligible voters determine the outcome.

"In low turn-out elections," he concluded, "city council, state legislature, county commissions-the percentage of the eligible voters who determines who wins can be as low as 6 or 7 percent."

The Coalition's imaginative executive director, Ralph Reed, describes the group's voter mobilization program as if it were a covert military operation: "I want to be invisible," he told one reporter. "I do guerrilla warfare. I paint my face and travel at night. You don't know it's over until you're in a body bag. You don't know until election night."

By this standard, election night in November was a body bag bonanza for the Robertson Right as they took seven seats for State Senate and House of Delegates from the Virginia Beach area. One recent Regent University graduate defeated a 20year incumbent Democrat. Describing the group's voter ID program, Reed explained that volunteers would telephone into pre-selected precincts and say "I'm taking an informal survey" for the Christian Coalition. Then, four quick questions: Did you vote for Dukakis or Bush? Are you a Republican or a Democrat?

"If they answered, 'Dukakis, Democrat' that was the end of the survey," laughed Reed. "We didn't even write them down. We don't want to communicate with them. We don't even want them to know there's an election going on. I'm serious. We don't want them to know." The third question, if respondents got that far, was do you favor restrictions on abortion? And finally, what is the most important issue facing Virginia Beach?

The Coalition used the data to create a computer file on each voter, with survey answers coded according to 43 "issue burdens." The ID'd voters would then mysteriously receive a letter from the Coalition's candidate: Computer-generated, laser-printed and individually tailored to one's "issue burden"-crime, education, traffic, etc.

If the voter happened to be pro-choice, the letter wouldn't mention abortion. "I'll take the votes of the pro-abortion Republicans" to get antiabortion Republicans in, Reed admitted. In fact, Reed said only 28 percent of his targeted voters identified themselves as anti-abortion.

This signals a significant shift from the grandiose Christian Right notion of a "moral majority." The Robertson forces are a self-conscious minority seeking power through smart utilization of political campaign technology and the institutions of democracy. Reed said one Democrat attempted to make an issue of Pat Robertson's contributions to political candidates. "But people didn't care if Pat Robertson had given money to anyone," Reed gloated. "They wanted better roads, etc.... We knew it. He didn't. We won. He lost. It's that simple." ...

The other wing of the Coalition's strategy for 1992 is the use of "voter guides" which are usually biased comparisons of candidate views or records. The Christian Coalition of Florida distributed 1.5 million of them in 1990, primarily by shipping them in batches of about 300 to 4,000 churches selected from a purchased list of 11,000. (Coalition activists also obtained church membership lists and cross-referenced them against lists of registered Republicans as part of a voter ID project in central Florida.) ...

The Christian Coalition claims it is an "issues-oriented" organization of "Evangelicals, pro-family Catholics and their allies" working to "reverse the moral decline in America and reaffirm our godly heritage." But at the November meeting there was little talk about issues. This conference was devoted to electoral politics, the mechanics of taking over the Republican Party and Coalition chapter development.

Former Reagan White House Domestic Policy chief (and now head of James Dobson'sFamily Research Council) Gary Bauer said, "Obviously this conference is about the 1992 elections." And the reason this and other elections are important, he added, is because "we are engaged in a social, political and cultural civil war."

Three members of the Republican National Committee explained the hows and whys of becoming an RNC member. One Coalition leader told me that he expects a conservative Christian majority on the RNC in the next few years. Several speakers stressed that it is time to stop thinking like outsiders and begin to be insiders interested in power and governance.

The focus on "values" on the part of Democrats and mainstream and progressive religious leaders is fine, but probably based on a faulty understanding of the Christian Right's rise to power. There is no question that theological issues and what we call "values" are important. So is framing.  I wrote about these things extensively in Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy. However, as my original report from inside the founding national strategy conference of the Christian Coalition makes clear:  the Christian Right rose to power because it was focused on gaining political power via the Republican Party and through electoral politics. Any analysis framing an action plan that does not take this into account, is misguided at best. However, as one who was there; who wrote the original expose; and as one who has written and spoken extensively about this aspect all this time, I am less inclined to be so generously understated about it.  

One particularly virulent error, endemic to most conventional wisdom about the religious right is that "message" is so important that one need not think of much else. We see this error manifested in many ways. We see it every time people indulge in a discussion of: "what shall we call "them?" (Answer: There is no one term that fits all occasions.) The exercise is radically reductionist on its face, and usually leads to highly counterproductive forms of labeling and demonization. But we also see this in operation when we hear about framing mainstream religious values in terms of social concerns with public policy consequences, such as poverty and environmental degradation. These alone will never change electoral outcomes. It is fine to be able to seamlessly connect and articulate Christian values with the urgent issues of the day. But again, as useful as this is, it is usually still only about articulating a message. It is not about envisioning a path to power to make one's values real in public policy.

Messages, like lawn signs, don't vote.

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