Ralph Reed: If the Christian Right wants to stay viable, it can't look like something out of the 80s
In a Wednesday morning press conference at the National Press Club, Ralph Reed’s message was clear: don’t look at me. Reed had made sweeping promises that the Faith and Freedom Coalition, his conservative voter ID and turnout operation, would stun pollsters and lead to a big conservative victory. “We did our job,” he insisted, recounting the tens of millions of phone calls, mailings, and other voter contacts his group made. He said his group had run the most efficient, most technologically superior voter contact and GOVT operation the faith community has ever seen. He claimed credit for increasing both white evangelicals’ share of the electorate and the share of the vote they gave to the Republican nominee. But it wasn’t enough.
“We can’t do the Republican Party’s job for them. We can’t do the candidates’ job for them.” In part, Reed blamed “candidate performance issues,” his euphemism for the Akin-Mourdoch rape comments that led to their undoing.
Reed said his successful efforts were not in the end sufficient because people of color and young voters turned out in numbers that he had not anticipated -- and voted overwhelmingly to re-elect the president. The fact that young voters, African Americans, and Latinos turned out so strongly seems to have stunned conservative figures across the board. And it confirmed for many of them the need for the Republican Party and the conservative movement to stop alienating Latinos and figure out how to attract younger voters. “We need to do a better job of not looking like your daddy’s Religious Right,” said Reed.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/ralph-reed-its-not-my-fault
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