The Dobson way
An evangelical leader steps squarely into the political ring
Weyrich tells U.S. News that, in a meeting with Specter after his public vow of support for Bush's nominees, he secured an additional pledge from the senator to allow conservative committee members to appoint some committee staff. (An aide to Specter denies he struck a deal but says the senator is "open to hiring good conservative candidates.") The Arlington Group, meanwhile, with roughly 75 members, will hold a strategy meeting in Washington during inauguration week in which U.S. News has learned that Texas Sen. John Cornyn, a Judiciary Committee member, is slated to speak.
With the makeup of the Supreme Court in the balance, the Specter flap may have been the opening shot in an all-out war to fill what Bush himself has reportedly predicted will be up to four or more vacancies on the high court during his second term. It's why Dobson fought to unseat Daschle and why he's threatening Democratic senators in '06: to strip Senate Democrats of their filibuster power--broken only with 60 votes--so that Bush's judicial nominees will survive confirmation. In Dobson's eyes, appointing "strict constructionists" is the only way to overturn Roe and to ensure 1996's federal Defense of Marriage Act--which bans same-sex marriage and gives individual states the right to disregard marriage licenses issued in other states--won't be overturned.
Abortion foes. In two early victories for religious conservatives, Bush announced last month that he would renominate 20 judicial appointees who failed to get a vote in the last Senate, while the GOP Senate leadership appointed two ardent abortion foes and marriage-amendment proponents--Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback and Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn--to the Judiciary Committee. "Many of the things Dobson and evangelicals have been fighting for hinge on [having] judges that have taken off in a direction totally different than the foundational principles of this country," Coburn tells U.S. News . "Replacing those judges is one of the most important things" on the agenda. And with Bush citing the Supreme Court's two most conservative members, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, as models for future appointees, both the religious right and its opponents are expecting a hard-right conservative.
With gains in the House and Senate by conservative Republicans, the Christian right will most likely see passage of the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act, which requires women seeking abortions to be notified that their fetus might feel pain during the procedure, and a law that criminalizes transporting a minor across state lines for an abortion to skirt parental notification laws. But evangelical leaders like Dobson say the political will to pass a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage is unlikely to materialize until a federal judge strikes down the Defense of Marriage Act. "It's inevitable," says Dobson. "What that will do is cut the legs out from under the senators who said it's not necessary and can be handled at the state level."
But Dobson says he is what Richard Land calls a "reluctant crusader" who'd rather be advising families than campaigning or lobbying. In fact, Focus devoted just 6 percent of its $146 million budget last year to influencing public policy through "grass-roots lobbying" and voting education and registration. The news media "say we're a right-wing hit squad," says Dobson. "That's really a small percentage of what we do."
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