I’ve made no secret of the fact that I am amazed to see Ralph Reed continue to be hailed as some sort of political guru despite the fact that his own political aspirations came utterly unglued due to his close ties to Jack Abramoff and his related record of exploiting the very group he claimed to represent.
Case in point: his recent appearance on “The Brody File“, the new half-hour TV program from CBN’s David Brody, where Reed explains that GOP losses in 2008 convinced him of the need for a “21st Century version of the Christian Coalition on steroids, married with MoveOn.org, with a sprinkling of the NRA” and led him to create his Faith and Freedom Coalition.
He goes on to report that the recent Citizens United decision will allow them to play an even more direct role in upcoming elections, and that the organization has 100,000 members and activists and 15 state chapters and predicts that it “will be a major force for good” and become a “permanent fixture on the American political landscape.”
Reed’s mission is to harness grassroots energy by merging the fiscal conservative agenda with the social conservative agenda … which is pretty much the mission of every other Religious Right group already in existence. Please, try and name one socially conservative group that does not also support the standard fiscal conservative agenda.
Reed’s real focus seems to be on merging Christian conservatives and Tea Party activists, as he reports that he has several Tea Party organizers who are also active in his Faith and Freedom Coalition, that he is personal friends with several national Tea Party leaders, and that he has personally participated in several high-profile Tea Party events.
Reed says that a significant number of Tea Party activists are also social conservatives and that what the entire movement is really concerned about is “moral issues”:
