WOULD YOUR GRANDFATHER RECOGNIZE TODAY'S NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY?

Some weeks back, at the Republican national convention in Philadelphia, over a dreary table of canapes, this writer had the pleasure of meeting and talking with nationally known film critic, radio talk-show host and author Michael Medved. As in another encounter with ace columnist, reporter and CNN commentator Robert Novak, Medved immediately recognized Cape Girardeau and associated it with pleasant memories from having spoken here three or four years ago on campus at the university. Having made this new friend, it was with pleasure that I opened The Wall Street Journal this past week to read an editorial-page piece Medved wrote on his fellow Orthodox Jew, the much-admired Democratic vice presidential nominee, Sen. Joseph Lieberman.

Medved had an excellent point as he rattled off the serious doctrinal positions of the Orthodox Judaism he shares with Lieberman. These include, among other positions: separate synagogue seating for men and women during worship services; opposition to the ordination of women as rabbis; a firm stance against abortion in favor of the right to life of the unborn, and much more unfashionable stuff certain to horrify the Hollywood Democrats and their media allies.

Medved wondered aloud: Why wasn't the national media making anything of this? (He might also have wondered: Where is the American Civil Liberties Union, as Lieberman repeatedly invoked the God of Abraham, warning us of the dangers of mixing church and state?) Imagine a conservative Christian who found himself nominated for national office at a Republican convention, who belonged to, say, some small, minority sect that demanded segregated seating for women and men. Such a hapless nominee would find himself swiftly Quayled if not Borked into the margins of our national life, by the media echo chamber. But with Lieberman, where such issues are concerned, the vast majority of national media tell you -- nothing.

All this is interesting in light of the loneliest person at a Democratic national convention. He or she is the pro-life, pro-gun Democrat.

This Democratic Party is a collection of high taxers and relentlessly anti-gun, extreme pro-abortion zealots who demand racial and gender quotas and set-asides in all endeavors -- including how their delegates are chosen. Neither of my grandfathers -- Southeast Missouri-style, Harry Truman Democrats both -- would recognize it nor feel at home inside it. After noting these days that nearly all the fierce gun-rights opponents nationally are Democrats, Charlton Heston asks a good question: Why are so few Democrats willing to defend constitutional freedoms? I have another: Why is it that no pro-life Democrats can ever be allowed the podium at their convention?

Make no mistake amid the distractions of overnight polling, with its instant reaction and its straws in the wind: In his relentlessly left-leaning acceptance speech Thursday night, appealing to Americans-as-victims, Al Gore ceded millions of voters, in vast stretches of the American mainstream, to the Bush-Cheney ticket. Where else to go?

Since Truman's classic, come-from-behind 1948 win over Tom Dewey, the Democratic Party has won a majority of white males exactly once: In LBJ's 1964 landslide over Barry Goldwater. Nothing Al Gore said last week, nor anything else by the Hollywood Democrats, did anything to correct this chronic, long-running deficiency.

~Peter Kinder is assistant to the president of Rust Communications and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.