Richard Land was one of the dozens of speakers Ralph Reed lined up for his Faith and Freedom Coalition Conference, so it makes sense that he would have some nice things to say about him … but his ill-informed gushing over Reed’s supposed brilliance is downright embarrassing:
“Ralph invented the game and how to play the game. He’s got a PhD in political science,” said Dr Richard Land the head of the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Church, the nation’s largest denomination with 16 million members.
“He’s one of them. He’s and evangelical. He understands the evangelical and the conservative Catholic positions. He understand what rings their chimes and what doesn’t.”
“Any time Ralph Reed is involved in something it’s going to make a difference. If I were running for office the very first thing i would do is hire Ralph as a consultant,” Land said. “Ralph knows how to do this.”
…
“Most evangelicals who know about it, view Ralph as a victim and that he was victimized by Abramoff like so many others,” Land said adding, “Conservatives don’t have any problem with people making money.”
First of all, Reed received his Ph.D in history, not political science. And secondly, only in the intentionally myopic view of the Religious Right was Reed in any way a “victim” of Jack Abramoff.
Reed was a knowing participant in Abramoff’s scheme to use the Religious Right to protect his client’s gambling interest and Reed, as such, went out of his way to conceal the source of that money from his Religious Right allies.
Abramoff and his colleague Jeff Scanlon called Reed a “bad version of us” and yet, to this day, Reed maintains that he “proud” of the work he did for Abramoff and insists that “it advanced sound public policy.”
Hardly the words one would expect from someone who was “victimized by Abramoff.”
