Some former coalition staffers said Roberta Combs, the group's executive vice president, has forced the wholesale departure of key operatives, a contention she disputes. I felt they have lost their way. The body has to regenerate new blood cells. Some leaders of the Christian right said they must develop a new, perhaps more conciliatory voice in this campaign year and beyond, one suited to an era of centrist politics. Robertson pointedly parted company with drafters of this year's party platform by calling for an end to the U.S. Department of Education.
Nobody wants to rock the boat.
Farris, who like Robertson is a Virginia delegate to the convention, and others say that while the Christian right has weakened in some states, its leaders have grown more sophisticated, maturing and working with disparate wings of the Republican Party to secure a role in national decision-making. The faith-based community realizes that in the end, to make a difference, they have to win elections. But voters know that people of faith can be involved in the public square. Stavros J. Mendros, a convention alternate from Maine, said after hearing Robertson today that his own opposition to abortion was the key to his winning a recent legislative race in the heavily Catholic precincts of Lewiston, making him the first Republican state representative from that area since 1902. He got us fired up.