Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1999 17:39:16 -0500 From: Kevin Ivers Subject: STRATEGY 2000: LCR MEMO's GOP CONGRESS - CONFRONT THE FAR RIGHT FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Kevin Ivers February 1, 1999 (202) 347-5306 x12 MEMO TO GOP: CONFRONT THE FAR RIGHT OR LOSE IN 2000 Polling Warns of Disaster Unless Leaders Confront Gay-Bashing, Extremism (WASHINGTON) On the heels of the announcement by anti-gay activist Gary Bauer that he is a candidate for the 2000 GOP nomination, and the growing controversy of links between Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) and a white supremacist organization, the nation's largest gay Republican organization sent a detailed memo to every Republican Member of Congress warning that unless the GOP confronts the growing faction of the far right within its ranks, it will be crushed in the 2000 elections. The memo argues that pandering to the religious right is at the root of all the most serious problems facing the GOP today, and that the party's strong identification with gay-bashing and other extreme positions on social issues is a "cancer eating away at our party's ability to hold the American people's trust." Through a detailed analysis of political trends from the 1994 takeover to the 1998 elections, plus polling data commissioned for the study, the memo warns that the GOP is on the precipice of a ruinous defeat at the polls in 2000 unless it directly confronts this problem. "This Faustian bargain with the far right is eroding the party's core strength," said Richard Tafel, executive director of Log Cabin Republicans. "The leadership needs to wake up to the fact that it has not only failed to bolster the party, but it holds the seeds of the party's destruction." The memo, written by Kevin Ivers, director of public affairs of LCR, challenges the conventional wisdom that "a hardcore, anti-gay religious right forms the "base" of the Republican Party," arguing instead that "cowardice within the party" gives the far right its true power. "Too many people see the vicious gay-bashing, racism and intolerance that goes on and stand silent," the memo argues. "Furthermore, the GOP leadership is grossly underestimating the dangers that the far right poses to the party's future ... Too much of the GOP leadership has either backed these views or cowardly refused to denounce them." The memo is part of an aggressive campaign launched in January by LCR entitled "Strategy 2000," aimed at advancing a set of core Republican principles, educating the public on Republican candidate positions, and confronting gay-bashing and extremism by the far right within the Republican Party. Log Cabin Republicans is the nation's largest gay Republican organization, with state and local chapters nationwide, a full-time Washington headquarters and a federal political action committee. THE FULL TEXT OF THE Feb 1, 1999 LCR ISSUE MEMO IS AVAILABLE ON THE WORLD WIDE WEB AT http://www.lcr.org ##### Log Cabin Republicans Kevin Ivers (202) 347-5306 phone Director of Public Affairs (202) 347-5224 fax http://www.lcr.org