HOW HE SEES IT Democrat sides with Scouts over ACLU

By PETER A. BROWN
ORLANDO SENTINEL
In their collective group-therapy sessions, Democrats should pay attention to how their only major officeholder in the nation's key battleground state is trying to survive politically.
Sen. Bill Nelson, the sole statewide-elected Democrat in Florida, has decided that one way to get re-elected in 2006 is to side with the Boy Scouts against gays and the American Civil Liberties Union.
Seems an obvious choice to me, but one assumes in Democratic circles it has caused much angst. However, Nelson is just learning from the master: William Jefferson Clinton, who had the genius to confront Democratic interest groups when they stood between him and the middle class -- and victory at the polls.
These are many of the folks who fret about the Bush economy and worry about the war in Iraq or think the country is on the wrong track, but don't think Democrats share their values. That's why George W. Bush is in the White House and the Republicans control Congress.
Nelson understands that millions of Americans think the Democrats often hang with the wrong crowd and that, in the inevitable political conflicts, the party has made poor choices because of those friendships. He realizes the best way to dissuade voters of that notion, at least in his case, is to publicly embrace a sworn enemy of those very same interest groups.
That's why Nelson is trying to help the Scouts resist efforts by the loony left to restrict the group's ability to function.
Political benefits
And let's not be overly cynical here. The political benefits to Nelson are apparent to anyone with a brain, but he deserves credit, too, for deciding the Scouts' good works make them worth championing.
The U.S. Supreme Court has told the ACLU it can't make Scouts accept homosexual leaders or stop them from requiring Scouts to believe in God. Talk about sore losers! Since then, the ACLU and allied groups have sought to nitpick the Scouts to death.
Lefty groups have pressured charities to cut off money to the Scouts, and allied lawyers have looked for every excuse to cause trouble for them.
The ACLU & amp; Co. don't like that the Scouts exclude gay leaders for young boys and requires that members believe in God. In red states, these notions are as American as apple pie.
Earlier this month, the Pentagon agreed to warn its military bases not to directly sponsor Scout troops. The military did it to settle an allegation that the government was engaging in religious discrimination because Scouts must acknowledge the existence of a (nonsectarian) supreme being.
In the ACLU worldview, that is a gross violation of the rights of atheists, and, perhaps more important, it symbolizes a mentality the group would like to see banished from our shores.
At times, Nelson has not always been the sharpest crayon in the box. But he gets an A for understanding his constituents--the same folks Democrats need to win national elections.
He is aware, for instance, that when the United Way dropped the Scouts, its donations suffered. But, most of all, he instinctively understands who Joe and Jill Six-pack see as the good guys in this argument.
Nelson has embarked on a tour of Florida in which he is meeting with Scout organizers to assure them that they will continue to get indirect military help in their efforts. He tells them that military personnel can still sponsor Scout troops on their own time and use military bases for meetings.
Resolution
And he introduced a resolution in Congress urging not just that the Pentagon support the Scouts, but that it fund their jamborees. The resolution passed the U.S. House of Representatives 391-3, with the only dissenting votes from Democrats with the safest of seats.
Nelson says that if the resolution doesn't work, he'll get the support enacted into law.
Nelson is taking a page from the gospel of winning elections in the South laid down by Clinton.
In 1992, Clinton picked a fight with Jesse Jackson to demonstrate his independence from black leaders who historically have been strong Democratic supporters, but whose policies and personalities have often alienated the much larger number of white voters.
Nelson knows that when he comes up for re-election in two years, the Republicans will paint a bull's-eye on his forehead and try to make unanimous their control over every statewide elected position in Florida.
X Brown is an editorial page columnist for the Orlando Sentinel. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.