Weak Reed: Religious Right Operative Fails To Deliver On Grandiose Election Promises
Rob Boston printable version print page     Bookmark and Share
Fri Nov 09, 2012 at 10:07:55 AM EST

Like a lot of you, I got way too many political calls in the lead-up to the election. In fact, I stopped answering the phone.

I made an exception just days before Nov. 6 when my caller I.D. announced that Ralph Reed was calling. Reed, former executive director of the Christian Coalition and now head of the Faith & Freedom Coalition (FFC), is a longtime Religious Right hack, and I wanted to hear his spiel. I raced to the phone. (In case you're wondering, I have attended FFC conferences in the past, and that's why I'm on Reed's call list.)

Unfortunately, all I heard when I picked up was a woman's voice ask, "Is this Mr. Boston?" before the line went dead.

The next evening, Reed tried once more. And again I jumped up from the couch (sending an alarmed cat scurrying upstairs) and grabbed the phone before the second ring. This time, I didn't even hear a voice, just a dial tone.

If this was an example of Reed's much-vaunted voter outreach, it leaves something to be desired.

The fact is, Reed had a bad night Nov. 6. Months prior to the election, he bragged about his plans to distribute 25 million voter guides and reach out to more than 100,000 churches. An army of right-wing evangelicals, he said, would march into the n