College Republicans

A new report released by the College Republican National Committee has been making waves this week for its stern warning that the GOP’s appeal is foundering among young voters. Chris Moody notes that the group explicitly mentioned the party’s opposition to gay rights as a reason why young voters are repelled by the party:

"[T]he conventional wisdom is right," the study's authors write in a section on how Republicans should approach marriage policy for gay and lesbian couples. "Young people are unlikely to view homosexuality as morally wrong, and they lean toward legal recognition of same-sex relationships."

…

With the culture shifting away from the party's policies, here's what they recommend:

The best course of action for the party may be to promote the diversity of opinion on the issue within its ranks. (After all, for quite some time, former vice president Dick Cheney was to the left of President Obama on same-sex marriage) and to focus on acceptance and support for gay people as separate from the definition of marriage. Where the Republican Party will run into the most trouble over this issue is when it is not winning on any of the more prominent issues, either – the economy and spending. If a candidate is compelling enough on economic opportunity and spending, they may well be able to overcome a difference of opinion with young voters on same-sex marriage.

The authors conclude: "On the 'open-minded' issue, yes, we will face serious difficulty so long as the issue of gay marriage remains on the table. In the short term, the party ought to promote the diversity of thought within its ranks and make clear that we welcome healthy debate on the policy topic at hand. We should also strongly oppose the use of anti-gay rhetoric."

But it turns out the College Republican National Committee is sponsoring the “Road to the Majority Conference,” hosted by Ralph Reed’s far-right Faith & Freedom Coalition, along with other anti-gay groups like Concerned Women for America, the Manhattan Declaration, the American Civil Rights Union and televangelist Pat Robertson’s Regent University.

In fact, some of the GOP’s most stringently anti-gay leaders like Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and Rick Santorum are scheduled to address the conference, and Robertson will receive Lifetime Achievement Award.

• Texas Freedom Network: David Barton’s Contempt for Teachers.
• Think Progress: Limbaugh: Volcanic eruption in Iceland is God’s reaction to health care’s passage.
• David Weigel: Tancredo: Send Obama 'back' to Kenya.
• Towleroad: President of Duke College Republicans Forced Out After Fellow Students Discover He's Gay.
• Steve Benen: Leave The 19th Amendment Alone.
• Greg Sargent: Palin: Founding Fathers Wouldn’t Agree With Separation Of Church And State.
• Box Turtlle Bulletin: National Institutes of Health Director condemns anti-gay pediatrician group.
• Finally, Good As You: Focus on the Family's ME outpost: Gay tolerance will destroy America, just like it did the World Trade Center.

Literally, just yesterday as I was doing my right-wing monitoring, I thought to myself "you know who's name I never see any more?  Ralph Reed."

And for good reason, given his deep ties to Jack Abramoff.  Actually, the last time he made any news was when he was forced to skip a fund-raiser with John McCain last year thanks to the fact that he has been permanently tainted by his association with Abramoff.

But, as Dan Gilgoff reports, Reed is now back with a new organization called The Faith and Freedom Coalition:

Ralph Reed, the Republican operative who built the Christian Coalition into a potent political force in the 1990s by mobilizing evangelicals and other religious conservatives and who did similar work to help George W. Bush win two presidential elections, is quietly launching a group aimed at using the Web to mobilize a new generation of values voters. In addition to targeting the GOP's traditional faith-based allies—white evangelicals and observant Catholics—the group, called the Faith and Freedom Coalition, will reach out to Democratic-leaning constituencies, including Hispanics, blacks, young people, and women.

"This is not your daddy's Christian Coalition," Reed said in an interview Monday. "It's got to be more brown, more black, more female, and younger. It's critical that we open the door wide and let them know if they share our values and believe in the principles of faith and marriage and family, they're welcome."

"There's a whole rising generation of young leaders in the faith community, and rather than nab the publicity I did at Christian Coalition, I want to cultivate and train that rising generation," Reed said. "One question is, who is our future Barack Obama, doing local organizing just like he was in the 1990s?"

The Faith and Freedom Coalition has been quietly active for a few weeks but has attracted no news media notice so far. Reed said that was intentional: "We're less focused on the pyrotechnics than on being a strong grass-roots presence all the way down to the precinct level, which has always been my emphasis."

The idea for the new group, which is still hashing out an organizational blueprint, was born just after Election Day 2008, when exit polls showed that Obama made gains among traditionally Republican religious constituencies, including evangelicals, conservative Catholics, and frequent churchgoers. "Since I left the Christian Coalition, we haven't had an engine designed to turn out this large part of the vote," Reed said. "After the election, people said that I ought to consider doing something about it."

Of course, the Christian Coalition was the engine that turned out "values voters," but it faltered under Reed's control. When he finally jumped ship to launch his own consulting and PR operation and "start humping in corporate accounts,” the organization all but collapsed.

Gilgoff reports that this new effort also features Gary Marx - who happens to be a long-time associate of Reed's and the current Executive Director of the Judicial Confirmation Network - and that, for now, the organization is operating out of his Century Strategies office in Atlanta:

Reed is serving as chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition and says he has filed papers with the Internal Revenue Service to register it as a 501(c)(4), a tax-free designation that permits lobbying and certain political activities. Gary Marx, Reed's deputy at the 2004 Bush campaign and Mitt Romney's conservative outreach director in 2008, will help advise the group. Jack St. Martin, a former top Republican National Committee staffer, is running day-to-day operations.

The Faith and Freedom Coalition plans to launch state and local chapters, as the Christian Coalition did, but is exploring the idea of organizing as much via "virtual chapters" that would operate online with the help of social networking technology. "The Internet's first wave was E-mail, and the next wave was social networking, which Obama perfected," Reed said. "There's going to be a third wave, which we're still developing."

...

Headquartered in the offices of Reed's consulting firm, Century Strategies, near Atlanta, the group plans to open a Washington office but says it will keep its staff small. St. Martin is currently the only full-time employee. "We don't want the huge overhead of a centralized group," says St. Martin, who worked at the Christian Coalition in the 1990s. "We'll have a few generals, but at the end of the day, we're going to emphasize putting boots on the ground out in the field."

Everything about this effort is pure Ralph Reed. From the focus on grassroots mobilization to his use of military language, it sounds like Reed is breaking out his Christian Coalition era playbook and seeking to recapture his former glory, even going so far as to dust off his efforts to reach out to minority groups, which, as I explained in a report [PDF] I wrote about him several years back that chronicled his rise from the College Republicans through his Abramoff-related downfall, is exactly what he tried and failed to do during his last days with the Christian Coalition:

In 1996, in an attempt to reach out to religious African American voters and bring them into the right wing movement, Reed announced that the Coalition was going to raise one million dollars to help rebuild black churches in the South that had been destroyed in a series of fire bombings. What had initially been planned as a one-day fundraising event ended up taking seven months. Similarly, Reed announced in 1997 the creation of the Samaritan Project, “A bold plan to break the color line and bridge the gap that separates white evangelicals and Roman Catholics from their Latino and African American brothers and sisters.” Reed pledged that the Coalition would raise $10 million for inner city churches, but less than a year later the project was abandoned after raising less than $50,000.

The simple point needs to be made that Reed, the man once dubbed "the Right Hand of God," had been seening his star dim even before he left the Christian Coalition and that the influence and power he had accumulated over the years all but evaporated when his efforts to exploit his Religious Right allies for Jack Abramoff's business purposes were finally revealed, culminating in his failed campaign to secure the Republican nomination for Lieutenant Governor in Georgia.

But, as we pointed out in our report: "Reed is still young and American politics is full of redemption stories. No doubt Reed is already writing his."

And with the announcement of this new effort, it looks like that is exactly what he is undertaking now.

As the Conservative Political Action Conference convenes today in Washington, the Right Wing is in a rut, divided over the Republican presidential candidates. CPAC is always a time when the “conservative movement” pays homage to Ronald Reagan, who spoke at the event 12 times since 1974; last year, candidates fell over themselves to see who could invoke Reagan’s name the most, even as graying activists warned of a decline in adherence to Reaganology.

The focus this year will be on John McCain, who managed to defy a number of talk radio hosts and emerge the frontrunner in last night’s elections. McCain had to pull out from last year’s CPAC in the face of a hostile reception, but he’s spent the interim brown-nosing the far right, and it’s no surprise that this time he’s planning to drum up late support by emphasizing his right-wing credentials and channeling the Reagan spirit: Human Events editor Jed Babbin reports that “McCain has prepared a video featuring President Ronald Reagan to make the introduction.”

Babbin warns that this would “backfire”:

Very few of the 2008 CPAC crowd will see McCain as the successor to Reagan and Reagan’s principles.  McCain has sacrificed conservatives’ fundamental beliefs throughout his Senate career.  If McCain uses this introduction, the boos will be very loud.

McCain faces a real quandary.  If he fails at CPAC -- and doesn’t win the CPAC straw poll (he finished dead last in 2007) -- the word will be out that the conservatives are off his team this year. 

But at this point, given the likelihood that McCain will win the Republican nomination, it’s the CPAC crowd that faces the quandary: If they pan him again, but GOP voters select him anyway, then what kind of influence do these activists really have?

In a telling display of the right wing’s contempt for affirmative action, College Republicans in Boston have decided to take a break from limiting the rights of gays, women and non-Christians to stand up for one of our society’s most down-trodden and ignored groups: white people.

Looking to draw attention to what they call the "worst form of bigotry confronting America today," Boston University's College Republicans are circulating an application for a "Caucasian Achievement and Recognition Scholarship" that requires applicants be at least 25 percent Caucasian.

Just in case any students of a non-pure blood attempt to swindle money from needy white Republicans, the scholarship application requires students to provide a written essay describing their lineage. Applicants are also required to write an essay describing “what is means to be Caucasian-American today.” Will applicants bemoan the lack of prominent white role models in government and business? Or, will they opine on the unequal treatment white people often receive from the criminal justice system? Perhaps, applicants will discuss their dream of a day when being white is not such a hardship. The Boston University group is not the first to offer scholarships to white folks. Two years ago a group of College Republicans in Rhode Island offered a similar scholarship, though their application required a photograph to “confirm whiteness,” and asked applicants to write an essay extolling white pride. Former RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie criticized those white only scholarships.