Political Platforms

Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson, a longtime abortion foe, said Thursday he believes that the antiabortion plank in the Republican platform should be amended to make it clear that those who support abortion rights are welcome in the party. "I want the party to be the party of the big tent," Thompson said in Madison, Wis. The governor is considered to be one of several potential running mates for GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole.

Ralph Reed, executive director of the 1.7-million-member Christian Coalition, predicted Wednesday that presumed Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole would reject any effort to weaken the GOP's water-tight position against abortion at its August nominating convention. Reed, a close ally of Dole's, told reporters he had been assured by an unnamed intermediary that "the plank is not going to change." Responding to Reed's comments, Christina Martin, Dole's deputy press secretary, said: "Sen.

Gov. Pete Wilson's sputtering presidential campaign found itself on the defensive again Wednesday, as staff members sought to explain an apparent softening in his pledge to try to remove anti-abortion language from the Republican Party's national platform.

The Christian Coalition's Ralph Reed Jr. and Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew, have given their support to a new group designed to bring its religious perspective to the growing political debate over values and public policy. The group's membership and platform are decidedly conservative. However, Orthodox Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, founder of the new Center for Judeo-Christian Values in America, said he hopes that the group will eventually encompass liberal viewpoints as well.

Leaders of the nation's largest church declared their independence Saturday in the 1996 presidential elections, welcoming allies in their fight against abortion but challenging conservatives on welfare reform, capital punishment and immigration. U.S. Catholic bishops, whose flocks have been courted in recent months by the Catholic Alliance, an offshoot of the conservative Christian Coalition, declared they are not beholden to any political party or interest group.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards have been sniping at each other for months over healthcare, but there's one thing the top Democratic presidential candidates agree on: Americans of all ages should have the choice of buying a government-run plan modeled on Medicare. The idea, which would set up a competition between a new government plan and private insurance programs, has been overshadowed by the political horse race.

With the presidential campaign going full tilt, a new government report on a big national problem is usually followed by volleys of rhetoric from the candidates. But on Tuesday, when the annual report on the precarious state of Medicare and Social Security came out, the reaction was not exactly deafening.

Barack Obama, as he introduces himself to the broader voting public, is emphasizing centrist -- even conservative -- positions on hot-button issues. In recent weeks, he toughened his stance on Iran and backed an expansion of the government's wiretapping powers. On Wednesday, he said states should be allowed to execute child rapists. When the Supreme Court the next day struck down the District of Columbia's ban on handguns, he did not complain.

The competing tax plans laid out by Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain would both add trillions of dollars to the national debt and could add to the tax system's complexity, a nonpartisan tax research group concluded Wednesday in a newly released report. Both campaigns assert that their plans to continue many Bush-era tax cuts and offer new reductions would aid the economy without massive new spending.

As her chances of becoming vice president recede, some of Hillary Rodham Clinton's supporters are pushing for the Democratic Party's new platform to state that the primary elections "exposed pervasive gender bias in the media" and to call on party leaders to take "immediate and public steps" to condemn future perceived instances of bias.