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Together at last
Now that Buchanan is taking his followers over to the Reform Party, the extreme right and extreme left can finally be united in their isolationist vision of the world.
By David Horowitz
[11/08/99]

The thin black line
Black liberal Democrats plan to rally behind white centrist candidates to help bring the party back into the majority in the House.
By Ethan Wallison
[11/08/99]

Killer: Shepard didn't make advances
A just-unsealed confession demolishes the "gay panic" defense. Too bad the media wasn't around to hear it.
By Dave Cullen
[11/06/99]

The survivor
The reason nothing seems to work in getting rid of Slobodan Milosevic is that the entire post-communist Serbian system remains geared toward authoritarian abuse.
By Laura Rozen
[11/05/99]

Bush gets an F in foreign affairs
The Texas governor who would be president can't identify the leaders of Chechnya, Pakistan or India. Has he been taking lessons from Dan Quayle?
By David Corn
[11/05/99]

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Bauer capitalizes on the Reagan connection whenever he can, sprinkling speeches and fund-raising material with references to the Gipper and his view of America as the "shining city on the hill." Like Reagan, Bauer supports decreasing taxes and increasing defense spending. He advocates a flat tax rate of 16 percent, with tax credits for families with children. He's also already talking about trying to appeal to Reagan Democrats, playing up his blue-collar upbringing in Newport, Ky., and opposition to most favored nation status for China, even though Reagan never supported protectionist positions.

Bauer recalls sitting in his living room as a teenager watching the Gipper deliver his nominating speech for Barry Goldwater at the 1964 Republican National Convention. "I said to my father at the time that I thought Reagan would be president some day and I wanted to work with him in the White House," he states proudly. "Twenty-one years later, I ended up being in the White House with a west wing office."

It was an ambitious goal for any young person, let alone one who had grown up amid poverty and alcoholism in a shabby suburb, just across the river from Cincinnati. Newport was so deeply corrupted by Cleveland mobsters and riddled with bars, brothels and casinos that in 1957 Esquire magazine dubbed it "Sin City."

Bauer's father, Stanley, better known as "Spike," worked various blue-collar jobs at the steel mill. The younger Bauer and his mother would often spend nights waiting for him to come home, knowing full well he was at the bar drinking his paycheck away. "I was usually at loggerheads with my father," Bauer says matter-of-factly. "He wrestled with alcoholism his entire life, so things were always kind of dicey at home."

Bauer's grandmother had already lost one son to the mob, and she was intent on providing some structure and solace in her grandson's chaotic childhood. She took him to the local Baptist church on Sundays, and eventually Bauer coaxed his parents to join him there. After his grandmother died, Bauer and his father were baptized together.

By age 17, Bauer's already deepening moral convictions prompted him to join a group of ministers and local Republican businessmen who were organizing a crusade to push the mob out of town. He passed out leaflets and attended meetings. "It was a combination of being involved in the reform effort in town and also this exposure to Reagan that led me to be involved in politics," he says.

The experience helped Bauer form his political views and would pay dividends down the road. When it came time to go to law school at Georgetown University and find a job in D.C., those Kentucky reform contacts came through in spades. The local Republican businessmen involved gave him a scholarship and even called the Republican National Committee and found him a part-time job in the research department. He went from the RNC to a position as a deputy director of the Direct Mail Marketing Association.

In 1980, Bauer left to take an unglamorous job as a policy analyst on the Reagan campaign. When Reagan won, he was rewarded with another low-level job in the office of domestic policy headed by Martin Anderson. For the first few months, Bauer didn't have much of an assignment and found himself bored and frustrated. He complained at a policy development meeting that the administration was paying too little attention to values issues like school prayer and abortion. "Almost as a throw-away, Anderson said, "Fine, Bauer," he recalls, "those issues are yours."

Bauer soon leap-frogged his way up in the administration bureaucracy, taking top positions near the end of Reagan's second term after other people left for private-sector work. He became deputy undersecretary of education, then undersecretary and later worked as head of the domestic policy office.

"[Bauer] became our go-to guy," says conservative consultant Craig Shirley. "He always returned our phone calls and was more than happy to take our message and take it as far as he could inside the administration."

While in the Reagan administration, Bauer doggedly pushed for issues like school prayer and a reversal of Roe vs. Wade -- so much so that, he admits, that chief of staff Donald Regan and first lady Nancy Reagan often told him to back off. But Bauer took solace knowing he was taking orders directly from the president, who supported his work and told him to stay focused, regardless of his west wing detractors.

Dobson, head of the socially conservative Focus on the Family, began inviting Bauer onto his popular radio talk show. In 1987, he joined Dobson's Colorado-based public policy group and spun off a Washington branch called the Family Research Council. Bauer built the Family Research Council into a $14 million dollar grassroots organization. Bauer's political action committee, the Campaign for Working Families is the sixth largest PAC in the country, pulling in $6 million in the 1997-98 election cycle alone.

By any standards, these are solid conservative credentials. Too bad, then, that 20 years after the Rev. Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority organized and rallied religious conservatives to become a powerful force in American politics, the movement is now losing steam, its leaders becoming increasingly disillusioned.

After Clinton's impeachment acquittal, Paul Weyrich, president of the conservative Free Congress Foundation wrote that attempts to restore morality "through the political process have failed." He suggested that conservatives channel their energy towards "parallel institutions" such as home schools and religious radio.

Now, as the 2000 campaign shifts into full gear, religious conservatives can't even decide which candidate to support.

Next page | Gary Bauer? You've got to be kidding!