Faith-Based Plan Has Dangers for GOP

DETROIT -- It's rather hilarious listening to liberals rail against President Bush's establishment of a White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

Mixing politics and religion by providing taxpayer dollars to faith-based organizations would offend the Constitution, asserted the American Civil Liberties Union. Added a New York Times editorial: "There is also an inherent danger in government's picking and choosing which groups to help." Such qualms haven't stopped the left from favoring government aid to faith-based groups of which it approves, however. One of the biggest is Detroit's Focus:HOPE, whose founder, Fr. William Cunningham, was an activist priest. True, Focus:HOPE doesn't emphasize its religious, much less Catholic, roots, but religious values still inform every aspect of its operations.

As for government picking and choosing which groups to help, that has long been a staple of left-wing politics. It is on display in the legal battle over racial preferences at the University of Michigan. U- M President Lee Bollinger just the other day argued to a federal court that unless his state-supported institution were permitted to favor African-American applicants to its law school, the cause of diversity would be seriously harmed. (An argument which, let it be said, seemed to undercut his other major contention: that racial preferences are just one factor among many in choosing which students to admit.)

What Democrats really fear, of course, is that the Bush initiative might drive a political wedge into the heart of the liberal coalition. As the last election vividly demonstrated, Democrats hold a virtual monopoly on the black vote. A mere 8 percent of African- Americans voted for George W. Bush nationwide. Republicans like Oklahoma Rep. J.C. Watts, an African-American, have been urging their colleagues to take their case to inner-city churches where the social conservatism of the GOP might have some appeal. That the Bush team might have some crass political considerations for its faith-based initiative, however, doesn't answer the question of whether such an approach is a good idea. In truth, that's debatable. The right should be almost as nervous about the idea as the left.

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