DOBSON WARNS REPUBLICANS TO STAY FAITHFUL TO SUPPORTERS

COLORADO SPRINGS, June 5 (LSN) – In a press release issued yesterday, Focus on the Family’s Dr. James Dobson sent a warning to Republican politicians that they must remain true to the pro-life, pro-family voters who put them in office. Dr. Dobson issued the letter in response to a statement by former president Gerald Ford urging Republicans to distance themselves from pro-life “zealots” in order to win votes.  “If ‘extreme-right’ partisans within the GOP control the party’s policies and dictate its choice of a presidential candidate for the 2000 elections, the party will lose at the polls” Ford claimed.  Dobson responded, “Isn’t it interesting that former president Gerald Ford, who lost to a virtual unknown Democrat in 1976, has become a great authority on how the Republicans can win elections?” Dobson called Ford’s advice “a serious miscalculation,” arguing it is based on the assumption conservatives “will continue to support the Republican Party even though its leaders ignore their deepest convictions.”“(Republicans must) listen to the concerns of grassroots folks who put Republicans in power in 1994,”  Dobson concluded. “One thing is certain, pro-lifers are not going quietly into the night this time around.  That is a promise.”  Canadian pro-life and pro-family leaders say the same “serious miscalculation” is currently guiding the strategies and policies of the Progressive Conservatives, both federally and provincially. The wholesale abandonment of the federal PC party by social conservatives shows the political danger of ignoring true conservative values, they say.