[Vision2020] Religious Right's Ralph Reed a Big Election Loser

[Art Deco]

Religious Right's Ralph Reed a Big Election Loser
 By AUSCS <http://www.opposingviews.com/users/auscs>, Fri, November 09, 2012

Ralph Reed's evangelical army was missing in action in key battleground
states.

Like a lot of you, I got way too many political calls in the lead-up to the
election. In fact, I stopped answering the phone.

I made an exception just days before Nov. 6 when my caller I.D. announced
that Ralph Reed was calling. Reed, former executive director of the
Christian Coalition and now head of the Faith & Freedom Coalition (FFC), is
a longtime Religious Right hack, and I wanted to hear his spiel. I raced to
the phone. (In case you’re wondering, I have
attended<http://www.au.org/church-state/julyaugust-2011-church-state/featured/ralph-reed-born-again>FFC
conferences in the past, and that’s why I’m on Reed’s call list.)

Unfortunately, all I heard when I picked up was a woman’s voice ask, “Is
this Mr. Boston?” before the line went dead.

The next evening, Reed tried once more. And again I jumped up from the
couch (sending an alarmed cat scurrying upstairs) and grabbed the phone
before the second ring. This time, I didn’t even hear a voice, just a dial
tone.

If this was an example of Reed’s much-vaunted voter outreach, it leaves
something to be desired.

The fact is, Reed had a bad night Nov. 6. Months prior to the election, he
bragged about his plans to distribute 25 million voter guides and reach out
to more than 100,000 churches. An army of right-wing evangelicals, he said,
would march into the nation’s voting booths and propel Mitt Romney to the
White House.

Sorry, Ralph, but it appears your army went missing in action.

Conservative columnist Steve Deace says Religious Right evangelical turnout
actually dropped in two key states – Virginia and Florida.

“The exit polls also said white evangelical turnout in Virginia was down 7%
from 2008, and Romney did not improve evangelical turnout in Florida from
four years ago while losing about 40,000 to libertarian Gary Johnson,” wrote
Deace<http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2012/11/07/republicans-lost-election-gop-future/1689255/>
.

*Christianity Today*
reported<http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2012/november-web-only/in-defeats-evangelicals-more-politically-united-than-ever-b.html>that
evangelical support for the GOP ticket also dropped in Ohio, the
mother of all battleground states. It was only a 3-point drop, but in a
tight race that might have made a difference.

“In Ohio, Romney had a more difficult time convincing evangelicals to
support him,” reported the magazine. “In 2008, McCain received 71 percent
of evangelical votes in Ohio. Exit polls this year don’t show much change,
with 68 percent of evangelicals voting for the Republican ticket.”

Just to be clear, Romney got a lot of support from white evangelicals on
Tuesday. Something like 78 percent backed him. But Reed didn’t promise to
merely help Romney maintain the status quo. He bragged about a dramatic
influx of new voters and an aggressive get-out-the-vote strategy to boost
Romney’s numbers.

Didn’t happen. As CNN
reported<http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/07/politics/why-romney-lost/index.html?hpt=hp_t1_5>,
the Republicans’ ground game was, well, not on the ground and not much of a
game. Ralph reportedly got $10 million from right-wing fat cats to turn out
the vote for Romney. I wonder if they’ll ask for a refund?

Reed did enlist a few right-wing heavy hitters to make robocalls for
him<http://blogs.cbn.com/thebrodyfile/archive/2012/11/05/only-on-the-brody-file-sarah-palins-last-second-audio-again.aspx>.
Among them were Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, former Sen. Rick Santorum and
that towering Christian leader Donald Trump.

Reed even reportedly persuaded Focus on the Family founder James Dobson to
do a robocall. Dobson must have a short memory because the last time he
worked with Reed, he ended up being duped into backhandedly aiding casino
interests<http://www.au.org/blogs/wall-of-separation/million-dollar-baby-ralph-reed-recruited-dobson-into-high-stakes-casino>during
the infamous Jack Abramoff scandal. (Reed was in that thing up
to his neck<http://www.au.org/church-state/march-2006-church-state/featured/wheel-of-misfortune>but
escaped serious scrutiny.)

But here’s the thing: In ReedWorld, you never have to say you’re sorry. The
day after the election, Reed appeared at a press conference in Washington,
D.C., to insist that he had done his job.

“We can’t do the Republican Party’s job for them,” a testy Reed
said<http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/11/08/15025030-ralph-reed-feels-a-little-defensive?lite>.
“We can’t do the candidates’ job for them.” He blamed the poor GOP showing
on “candidate performance issues.”

What about the millions of phone calls Reed promised to make? What about
his vow to implement the most technologically sophisticated voter ID and
outreach effort the conservative world had ever seen? (Reed told *The New
York Times* in September that his group would
call<http://au.org/blogs/wall-of-separation/murky-math-why-ralph-reed-s-latest-political-claims-don-t-add-up>17.1
million registered voters in 15 key states and that two million people
would receive personal visits.) What about his scheme to flood the nation
with slanted voter guides?

Reed insists he did all of that stuff. Two hang-up calls later have left me
skeptical.

The sad thing is, I suspect Reed doesn’t really care if his outreach wasn’t
all it was cranked up to be. After all, he still got paid. And for Ralph,
that’s the bottom line in more ways than one.


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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