The Abramoff scandal — the inside-the-beltway story of Congressional corruption and the influence of connected lobbyists, that finally brought down former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) — will probably, eventually, also consume longtime Christian Right political leader, Ralph Reed.
In the 1990s, Reed epitomized the emergence of the Christian Right as an organized political force. Times have changed, and several major political careers may turn on the widening gyre of the scandal.
Bob Moser, writing in the current issue of The Nation, has a long and revealing look at the trajectory of Reed’s career – from boy political wunderkind to the combustion of the Abramoff corruption scandal.
Every week brings a new revelation about the millions in dirty money Reed earned by duping his fellow evangelicals into putting their political muscle behind “Casino Jack” Abramoff’s gambling clients. Reed’s huge leads in both popularity polls and fundraising have almost disappeared. Instead of making his triumphant debut as a politician, the man Time magazine called “The Right Hand of God” is fast becoming the new poster boy for Christian-right corruption.
It has been surprising that the national media and the Democratic Party have not made more of Reed’s role in the Abramoff scandal. The credibility of the Christian Right itself may be in jeopardy according to some.
Last June Georgia’s former GOP House minority leader, Bob Irvin, blasted Reed in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution op-ed. “His M.O. is to tell evangelical Christians that his cause of the moment, for which he has been hired, is their religious duty,” Irvin fumed. “As an evangelical myself, I resent Christianity being used simply to help Reed’s business.”
Irvin’s dart went straight to the heart of the matter. While grassroots organizing has been the key to lifting evangelicals to power in the GOP, the movement’s political model has mostly mirrored the traditional hierarchy of churches, with trusted leaders setting the tone and issuing marching orders to their foot soldiers. What if the generals–the Reeds and James Dobsons–are proven to care more about power and money than stamping out abortion or homosexuality? The damage to evangelical politics would clearly be immense. So would the damage to the Republican Party, which cannot carry a national election without the full enthusiasm and participation of the evangelical troops.
“Think what will happen on Election Day when 2 to 3 percent of the previously most passionate Republicans stay home,” Joseph Farah, editor and publisher of the right-wing WorldNetDaily, warned in January. “Think of what it will mean when 20 to 30 percent of the grassroots activists Republicans have counted on to work for them don’t show up.”
Other evangelical leaders and allies are taking their hits in L’Affaire Abramoff–former House majority leader Tom DeLay, in particular, along with antigay crusader Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition and right-wing Rabbi Daniel Lapin of Toward Tradition, both of whom allegedly took money from Abramoff client eLottery to help defeat a federal ban on Internet gambling. But Reed’s involvement runs the deepest and broadest by far. And the particulars of his cloak-and-dagger activities strike the evangelical political movement straight in the gut.
Just speculation? Nope. Moser has the goods. Here is a sample:
But the fallout from Reed’s “anti-gambling” efforts has already flattened the once mighty Texas Christian Coalition. The equally powerful Christian Coalition of Alabama, which helped Reed fend off video poker and state lottery bills in 1999 and 2000–spending some $850,000 that has now been traced back to the casino-owning Mississippi Band of Choctaws–has also fallen into a tailspin, with its most popular political champion, former “Ten Commandments Judge” Roy Moore, trailing by almost thirty percentage points in the GOP primary race for governor.
Although Reed’s campaign has been struggling, it has remained alive. So far.
If he does pull it off, it will mostly be a tribute to the persistence of evangelicals’ “see no evil” attitude toward their political leaders. The Republican Party leadership in Georgia, for its part, has tried everything short of paid political assassination to force Reed out of the race. In February twenty-one of thirty-four Republican state senators took the unprecedented step of signing a letter publicly urging Reed–who steered the party to historic victories as state chairman in 2002–to withdraw his candidacy “for the good of the Republican Party.” As the GOP’s nominee for lieutenant governor, they fear he would drag down their other candidates for statewide office, including incumbent Governor Sonny Perdue, who faces a tough match-up in November with either the current lieutenant governor, Mark Taylor, or the secretary of state, Cathy Cox. There’s been a low rumble of rumors that Reed will pull out in late April, when Georgia candidates officially file for office during “candidate qualifying week.” But few believe them. “He really can’t afford not to stay in,” says Charles Bullock, a political scientist at the University of Georgia. “He’s getting terrible press everywhere, and his consulting business is in bad shape. If he wins, it would raise his stock again. He can say, ‘Look, the people who know me best voted for me.'”
[Originally posted at Talk to Action and Political Cortex]
