In the November 12 Washington Post, columnist David Ignatius opines on the lesson taught by the victories of Mayor Bloomberg in New York City and Governor-Elect Tim Kaine in Virginia. "The American pubic may finally be getting fed up with partisan politics, enough so that it will reward politicians who refuse to play that game and instead campaign from the middle."

Let's reject from the outset that the reelection of Bloomberg has anything in common with Kaine/Kilgore. The politics of Virginia-where I live-are, thankfully, light years behind the megalopolis of New York City.

Ignatius is just one of many pundits and politicians counseling "a move to the middle" for the Republicans. This is coded language for eliminating issues like gay marriage, abortion, and fetal stem cells from the GOP agenda.

Thus, the defeat of Jerry Kilgore by Democrat Tim Kaine poses a great temptation for the Republican Party. Left-wing pundits and Republicans wary of life issues are using this election as an opportunity to describe the Kaine victory as a defeat of the Bush/Rove political strategy.

Kilgore's defeat in no way signals either the death or exhaustion of a political strategy that won the presidency in 2000 and 2004. This strategy built a coalition of religiously active voters by putting their issues on the policy agenda. Kilgore's attempt to use this strategy was clumsy at best. It's clear that his strategists did not understand the dynamics of these religious voters.

The Kilgore strategy succeeded in first dividing and then alienating his religious support. He began by attacking his Democratic opponent, Catholic Tim Kaine, on his opposition to the death penalty. In doing so, Kilgore succeeded in alienating many Catholics who have changed their attitude toward the death penalty since Pope John Paul II's Evangelium Vitae of l995. In defending himself against Kilgore's attack, Kaine gave public witness to his Catholic faith in a way not seen in a Democratic candidate in a long time.

(The statement on the death penalty being considered this week by the U. S. Bishops at the annual meeting in Washington, D.C. will no doubt make this a bigger issue of contention in future elections.)

Sure, Kaine espoused the old Mario Cuomo line about the difference between his private belief and public responsibility, but under harsh attack by Kilgore on a matter of religious belief, Kaine's personal story about his conversion to political action while on a Jesuit mission trip was very appealing.

By dividing his religious base, Kilgore gave his opponent the opportunity to woo disgruntled Catholic voters. Then he waffled on the very question that was most important to his remaining religious supporters - abortion. By the end of the campaign, he had effectively dismantled the very component of his base support that should have energized his candidacy - Evangelical and socially conservative Catholic voters.

The lesson for the Republican party is not that social and moral issues should be delegated to the background of political campaigning, but that those candidates who want to woo and win the religious voter must first understand what unites Evangelicals and Catholics and what does not.

Jerry Kilgore was, in fact, a very attractive and articulate candidate with solid core beliefs. It's a pity that his strategy revealed such a flawed understanding of his natural constituency. Governor-to-be Tim Kaine now arrives on the policies landscape representing a new but more attractive iteration of the Mario Cuomo Catholic, thus signaling trouble for Senator Rick Santorum in the upcoming election against Bob Casey, Jr.

Kaine, of course, will lose some of this credibility when his views on other more important life issues are made widely know. But, in the meantime, GOP leaders and strategists should resist the temptation to abandon the issues that have created such a strong and reliable religious coalition during the past two national elections.

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