Word: bauer
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Which is what could happen in California this week. Bauer has inserted himself into a battle between two Republicans in a special election for a House seat in Santa Barbara. The district is made up mostly of fiscally conservative, socially moderate Republicans, which is why Speaker Newt Gingrich was backing Brooks Firestone, an heir to the family tire business who became a winemaker and, since 1994, a moderate, pro-choice state assemblyman. But a furious Bauer ponied up $100,000 for an ad campaign that zings Firestone for his refusal to back a ban on partial-birth abortions and promotes...
...Bauer's opponents, but what if the stakes are higher: the whole Congress? Abortion has long divided the Republican Party, and divided parties lose elections. When the 165 members of the Republican National Committee gather for their annual winter meeting this week in Palm Springs, Calif., they'll have a stink bomb on their hands--a resolution that would prohibit the R.N.C. from funding any candidate not opposed to partial-birth abortion. Bauer didn't write the resolution, but his politics inspired it. "This isn't a matter of ideology, it's a matter of human decency," says Colleen Parro...
...Bauer lives for these showdowns. He challenged the G.O.P.'s once sacred support of free trade by joining a coalition of liberals in last year's high-profile campaign against renewal of China's most-favored-nation trade status. And he confounded both the country-club set and free-market purists by defending government-run Social Security against talk of privatization and pushing a $500-per-child tax credit over breaks for corporations in last summer's budget deal...
...problem Bauer poses for the party is that it can't afford to ignore his bomb throwing. Like Reed, who gave the Christian Coalition a powerful national voice, Bauer has transformed the Family Research Council from an organization with a 3,000-member mailing list and a $200,000 budget into one with 455,000 members and a $14 million budget. And like Reed, who had Pat Robertson as his backer, Bauer has the widely followed radio evangelist Rev. James Dobson behind him. With Reed off the stage in Atlanta as a political consultant and Gingrich obsessing about tax cuts...
That's where Bauer comes in, although his tactics do limit his influence inside the Beltway. Gingrich doesn't consult him, and neither does Senate majority leader Trent Lott. Which is why, to the dismay of candidates like Pat Buchanan who hoped to woo his followers, Bauer is now talking about running for President. That would be the ultimate outsider's strategy...