Unity may be harder fight than victory

Fundamental differences have to be addressed before a much-discussed spirit of compromise can take hold.

GREENVILLE, S.C. - Joel Ann Chandler couldn't be happier with Tuesday's elections. For her it was about values: ending abortion, backing traditional marriage, supporting the war in Iraq and electing a presidential candidate who isn't afraid to tout his faith.

Jennifer Roland couldn't be more discouraged. It was about values for her, too: protecting the environment, improving education, finding a way out of Iraq, and electing a presidential candidate whose party doesn't confuse religion and policy.

Chandler, 54, owns the Maudlin Open Air Market on land her family has farmed since 1924. Roland, 30, is a waitress who wants to open her own deli one day. After hearing the calls for unity after last week's presidential and U.S. Senate elections, both are willing to compromise to help heal America. To a point.

"Not on the God issues," Chandler said. "When you take the God out of good, you got zero left."

"Unless Bush comes out and says, "I tricked you,' and convinces the American people that the terrorists were hiding in Iraq, I don't support his war," Roland said. "And I don't see myself supporting a ban on gay marriage any time soon."

Unification of any sort requires compromise. After resounding Republican victories in the White House and Congress, experts say the winning side is likely to see little need for that, especially on divisive social issues, such as gay marriage and abortion, that energized conservatives and helped ensure a massive turnout for Bush in Ohio and Florida.

Liberals aren't likely to abandon those issues, either. Meanwhile, the Bush administration and Democratic leaders have fundamental differences about the president's plans for a second term, including more tax cuts, tort reform and the role of the government in Social Security and health care.

With four more Republican seats in the U.S. Senate, all won by social conservatives, conservative and evangelical leaders already are calling for the Senate to revive the constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, which failed earlier this year.

With several members of the U.S. Supreme Court nearing retirement, observers expect Bush will have the opportunity to appoint one to three new justices, which is likely to become a battle over legalized abortion. Republicans also hope a friendlier Senate will approve several of the president's conservative nominees to lower courts, whom the Democrats have largely blocked.

Meanwhile, Democrats in the U.S. House, where they lost three more seats, already complain the Republican leadership refuses to let them introduce legislation.

"That combination says okay, you say you want to work and unite people, but show me the blueprint for doing it, because I don't see it," said Steve Jarding, professor at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and a former senior adviser to the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee.

Jarding said the number of moderate senators who can bridge party lines has dwindled with each election. On Tuesday, four conservative Republicans replaced Democrats, including the retiring Bob Graham of Florida.

Florida's senator-elect, former U.S. Housing Secretary Mel Martinez, backs Bush's limited funding for embryonic stem cell research and opposes spending more on education. The Senate Democratic leader, Tom Daschle of South Dakota, was defeated by a Republican who also is closely aligned with Bush.

In Oklahoma, Republican Sen. Don Nickles, who retired, was replaced by former Rep. Tom Colburn, who decried "rampant lesbianism" in schools and told the Associated Press that doctors who perform abortions should get the death penalty.

And in South Carolina, the retiring Ernest F. Hollings' is being replaced by U.S. Rep. Jim DeMint, a Greenville Republican who campaigned on replacing the income tax with a 23 percent sales tax, and who believes gays should not teach in school.

Last week, the Family Research Council and other conservative groups took credit for putting Bush over the top. In Florida, an exit poll conducted for the St. Petersburg Times and other news organizations found that voters who identified "moral values" as the most important issue overwhelmingly chose Bush, as did white Protestant Christians.

National exit polls found the same thing, including in Ohio, where an amendment to ban gay marriage and civil unions passed by 62 percent. According to a poll conducted by nearly two dozen news organizations, "moral values" was cited as the top issue more often than terrorism, the economy and the war in Iraq.

And of those voters who put moral values first, nearly 80 percent voted for Bush. While these voters, like Chandler, say they may compromise on mechanical issues such as Social Security reform, they will not compromise on hot-button cultural issues such as abortion and gay rights.

"Their supporters are going to accept no excuses for not delivering on the promises on the social agenda, which is going to have a very sharply polarizing effect on the American people," said Peter J. Kuznick, an expert in 20th century U.S culture and politics at American University.

On Wednesday, after Democrat John Kerry conceded the election, Bush used almost exactly the same words as he used in 2000, when he promised to be "a uniter, not a divider." Soon after his inauguration that year, however, he expanded funding for religious-based social services, cut funding for international family planning programs and limited stem cell funding.

At a news conference Thursday, Bush again suggested he would move decisively.

"When you win, there is a feeling that people have spoken and embraced your point of view, and that's what I intend to tell the Congress," Bush said. "I earned capital - political capital - in this election, and I'm going to spend it."

Last week, conservative groups suggested the clear passage of anti-gay marriage initiatives in 11 states showed the nation was not as divided on cultural issues as Democrats or the conflict-driven media contend. In Florida, voters solidly approved an amendment that makes way for requiring girls who get an abortion to tell their parents.

But 49 percent of American voters did choose Kerry. It is not wholly a red-state nation.

The question now is, should the Republicans really bother with reconciliation? And should the Democrats really expect them to?

Tuesday's election further highlighted the divide between urban and rural voters, and between North and South. But the ideological divide also resounded in communities like Greenville, a red county in a red state where left-leaning voters like Roland say "you're almost ashamed to be a Democrat in South Carolina these days."

The race to replace Hollings, who served in the Senate for more than 40 years, was ugly. DeMint, the Republican, ran as the antitax, pro-family candidate, and was painted as a right-wing ideologue by the Democrats. His Democratic opponent, former state schools superintendent Inez Tenenbaum, campaigned as a moderate but was portrayed as a leftist who advocates abortion as birth control.

DeMint won by 10 points and, like the president, he carried Greenville County by a 2-1 ratio.

Democrats held that seat for 125 years.

Democrats are struggling to make sense of last week's heavy losses, and many say they realize they must find a way to reach more moderate and conservative voters. In a way, Republicans said, Daschle's defeat makes a good case for concessions - from the Democrats.

"It sends a strong message to moderate Democrats in the Senate that they just vote the party line at their own peril," said Rep. Tom Feeney, R-Oviedo. "The majority of Americans are very unhappy about that, especially in the red states."

But the Republicans face danger, too. Although Bush won the popular vote, and became the first presidential candidate to gain more than 50 percent of the vote since his father did in 1988, the margins in many states were slim.

If not for a big turnout by social conservatives, the outcome in Ohio or Florida could have been different, analysts say.

Now the party must avoid alienating moderate voters who chose Bush because they trusted him to fight terrorism more effectively than Kerry, or who didn't want to change presidents in the midst of the war in Iraq. Exit polls showed those voters were key to the president's re-election, too. If conservative Republicans pursue an agenda that widens the culture gap too much, they could lose those voters during midterm congressional elections in 2006, or in presidential election of 2008.

"When Bush is saying that we need to be united, he could just be talking to his own party," Jarding said. He's "saying, "Don't send me things that are too hard to sign, don't try to be too far out there. . . . If we're going to get things done, we have to maintain some realm of moderation. If we get too far out there, there's likely going to be a backlash."

Chandler's market sits on part of the 36 remaining acres from her grandparents' farm in Mauldin, which has become a bedroom community of Greenville. Her grandparents settled here in 1924 just across the street, and built their 20 acres into 150. Chandler has run her market for 25 years, and believes that God has played a role in her success and should be allowed to play a role in America's.

Roland and her fiance, Jay Simpson, work in downtown Greenville, a progressive outpost of trendy shops and bars, where one is just as likely to find an environmentalist as a Baptist.

As Americans consider what it means to unite, rather than divide, there are two worlds worth considering: one in Washington, and one on Main Street.

In Washington, it's easy for political relationships to trump the personal ones. On Main Street, that's not so true. "Everybody wants what's best for the country," Chandler said. "They just have different ways of going about it. . . . The election's over. It's going to be four years before they have another opportunity."

Roland, who grew up in Florence, S.C., said her grandmother founded the state's chapter of the National Right to Life Party in the late 1960s and has twice served as a delegate to the Republican National Convention. "My grandmother would die if she knew I voted Democrat."

So she just doesn't tell her. "Politics don't make the world go round, despite what people think," Roland said. "It's these "family values' that make the world go round."

She put little quote marks around "family values" with her fingers, a little facetiously, but not too much.

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