People For the American Way released a comparison of the civil and constitutional rights positions of the presidential candidates showing little difference in the views of the Republican presidential candidates, revealing how far right the Republican party has shifted. Former presidential hopeful Gary Bauer's endorsement of John McCain today is no surprise given the similar voting records of each candidate on issues ranging from abortion rights to posting the Ten Commandments in public buildings.

"The radical Religious Right has won the battle for the soul of the Republican Party," said Ralph G. Neas, president of People For the American Way. "The far right has taken over the party of Lincoln, giving moderate Republicans no real choice in this election."

Throughout the campaign Gary Bauer, Steve Forbes and Alan Keyes have been portrayed as far right candidates and Bush and McCain as more moderate. A comparison of their positions on key constitutional and civil rights issues shows that all candidates hold virtually identical opinions on abortion, affirmative action, amending the Constitution to ban flag burning, workplace discrimination and hate crimes against gays and lesbians, vouchers for private and religious schools, posting of the Ten Commandments in public schools and gun control.

The chart is available on the PFAW website in Adobe PDF format:
http://www.pfaw.org/issues/right/candidatechart-onepage.pdf

The Adobe Acrobat Reader (browser plug-in) can be download from:
http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/readstep.html

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