Salon.com > Ralph Reed

Social conservatives slam RNC for supporting Rob Portman

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 13:03:00 +0000

Social conservatives told the RNC not to be "pandering idiots," after Chairman Reince Priebus stood by Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, who over the weekend came out in support of same-sex marriage.

From the National Review Online:

“I think [the RNC] should pretty much ignore him,” says Phyllis Schlafly, a longtime conservative activist, in an interview with National Review Online. “I think he has made a mistake, and he probably won’t get reelected.”

Ralph Reed, the founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, says the party has to be careful. “If the Republican party tries to retreat from being a pro-marriage, pro-family party, the big tent is going to become a pup tent very fast,” he says. “I am concerned that some in the party are going wobbly on this issue.”

Brian Brown, of the National Organization for Marriage, told NRO that Portman will now likely get a challenger in the primary. “This is a critical issue, and to act like it’s just no big deal is just wrong."

Immigration reform according to Ralph Reed’s Bible

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 17:30:00 +0000

Ralph Reed’s op-ed in USA Today is a good example of the limitations of relying on scripture as a guide to and basis for public policy. Many religious advocates for comprehensive immigration reform have invoked the biblical themes of compassion and welcoming strangers in making the case for moving millions of undocumented immigrants out of the shadows. Reed mentions those same themes, while arguing that it’s “a matter of judgment” how to apply them to immigration reform. But he seems more certain about how to apply his interpretation of other biblical themes to very specific policy details:

In Scripture, the obligation to care for the alien carries a corollary responsibility for the immigrant to obey the law and respect national customs. In the Old Testament, immigrants who followed the law shared in the inheritance of Israel. Amnesty violates this principle. Those who have come to the U.S. illegally must reform: Pay fines and back taxes, undergo a criminal check, learn English and wait before they can apply for a green card. Those who entered the country illegally should not be guaranteed a path to citizenship.

Three shameless lies in the religious-right “voter guide”

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 15:11:00 +0000

Intent on making good on his post-2008 election promise to "never get out-hustled on the ground again," Ralph Reed, who leads the right-wing Faith and Freedom Coalition, this week unveiled the organization's ostensibly "non-partisan" presidential election voter guide, which will be inserted into church bulletins throughout the nine battleground states in which the November election will be won or lost.

In his Christian education, though, apparently Reed never learned that it's a sin to tell a lie. His voter guide contains three big ones, in its characterizations of President Barack Obama's positions on Medicare, environmental regulation and abortion.

Reed's voter guides resemble the handbills distributed by the Christian Coalition in the 1990s, at that time delivered by that quaint operation known as the U.S. Postal Service, when Reed ran the organization for the Rev. Pat Robertson.

Ralph Reed rises from the ashes

Sat, 01 Sep 2012 12:59:00 +0000

As the sun slowly sets over the Republican National Convention in Tampa, we settle back in the chairs that nice Mr. Eastwood just gave us and ponder some of the other oddities of the week. Like this item in the official GOP platform pointed out by Brad Plumer of The Washington Post:

No minimum wage for the Mariana Islands. “The Pacific territories should have flexibility to determine the minimum wage, which has seriously restricted progress in the private sector.”

This caught our attention (and thanks to colleague Theresa Riley for sending) because it once again reminds us of the sordid past of evangelical and political entrepreneur Ralph Reed who, as this week’s edition of Moyers & Company reports in detail, has emerged from the ashes of epic career fail to reestablish himself as a powerful figure in Republican politics.