Forbes Says GOP Leaders Ignore Conservative Tenets

WASHINGTON —  Escalating a bitter, intraparty dispute, Steve Forbes, magazine publisher and former candidate for the GOP presidential nomination, said Tuesday that Republican leaders of Congress are “badly off-message” and flirting with ruin by failing to adhere to conservative principles.

Appearing with new Christian Coalition President Donald P. Hodel at a gathering sponsored by Human Events magazine, Forbes singled out the GOP-negotiated balanced-budget bill as “an abomination” at which the party faithful “can only shake their head in wonder.”

Hodel, meanwhile, said the Christian Coalition’s top legislative priority is the elimination of worldwide persecution of Christians and other devoutly religious people. Under Ralph Reed, who resigned as the group’s leader earlier this year, the top goals had been domestic racial reconciliation and urban renewal.

“More Christians have been killed in this century than in the 1,900 years preceding it,” said Hodel, who replaced Reed as head of the conservative, 1.9-million-member Christian organization. He listed Sudan, Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia as particularly dangerous places for Christians and Jews.

Hodel said he was concerned with the persecution of all religious people, and added that his group would urge passage of legislation to create a White House office to investigate charges of political oppression of faith-based people and to take appropriate sanctions.

In his remarks on Tuesday, Hodel never mentioned racial concerns as a priority and did not explain why the group was shifting gears in the middle of the legislative session.

“We place [elimination of religious oppression] at the top of our agenda,” Hodel said. “We do so because it is an international crisis, and U.S. inaction is a disgrace. Americans must speak out.”

In his remarks, Forbes appeared to be positioning himself for a possible repeat bid for his party’s presidential nomination in 2000. He floated a set of conservative social ideas of the same sort that he eschewed during his failed 1996 campaign, which focused almost exclusively on his argument for replacing the current income tax system with a flat tax.

Referring to the title of the forum--”Framing the Debate for ’98 --What the Republican Congress Should Do Now”--Forbes said the GOP-led Congress “must lay out a simple, conservative, bold agenda for the American people” or risk losing control of the legislature.

“The GOP is badly off-message,” he said. “They are drifting off their principles, and they’re not sure what they’re here for, and that’s why we’re here.”

Forbes won applause from the audience when he returned to his signature theme: a forceful call for the abolition of the Internal Revenue Service and the call for a flat tax.

“We must kill it, drive a stake through its heart and never let it rise from the grave,” he said, referring to the IRS.