by Bob Jones
Cover Story | t's only 1997 and already Sen. John Ashcroft is making his move to become the candidate of the Christian right. A member of a Republican Congress that is otherwise putting the rank-and-file GOP to sleep, he's managed to identify with the only excitement on Capitol Hill: battling to shut down the National Endowment for the Arts; switching his position and backing Jesse Helms in his ideological fight with liberal GOPer William Weld; stopping abortion-providing HMOs in the Medicaid system; and standing out as one of the lone Senate voices against the president's national education testing plan. Is he starting too early? In a party where activists are still shivering from the Bob Dole nightmare, Sen. Ashcroft is hoping to become the presidential candidate of their dreams.
