Badpuppy Gay Today

Tuesday, 29 April 1997

While 700-Club TV evangelist Pat Robertson's diamond mine scandal grabs headlines, Ralph Reed, who announced Thursday he'd be leaving the unhappy Robertson and the Christian Coalition after an 8-year relationship, may now be reflecting that he should have said he'd leave sooner. Reed had originally set the date for his departure in September. Some are now expressing hope that if Reed remains until the September date, the Robertson diamond stigma will permanently taint Reed's political career as well.

Reed, 35, says he will form a political consulting firm that will be named Century Strategies, possibly to be located in Georgia, his home state. Besides assisting other candidates for office, Reed has entertained thoughts, he says, of running for political office himself. When Reed, in concert with Robertson, assumed, in 1989, the position of front-man for the Christian Coalition, the coffers of that organization contained approximately $200,000. Reed's strategic successes brought the amount to $27 million in 1996.

Speculation about reasons for the Reed/Robertson breakup is rampant. Frank Rich, writing in the New York Times (April 27) says that Reed may have begun to realize that his connections to Robertson and to the Religious Right are likely to backfire on his own political aspirations. Bob Dole, he claims, found himself badly hamstrung by the Christian Right in the 1996 Presidential campaign, regarding Reed and Robertson as albatrosses "yanking him violently to the right again as surely as Al Pacino got sucked back into the Mafia in Godfather III."

Few believe, explains Rich, that the Christian Coalition will be able to find another front man to put a "happy unthreatening face" onto the schemes Robertson promotes in the name of religion. Pundits have called attention to how Reed accomplished this with finesse when Robertson's anti-Semitic ravings were critiqued following their publication in his book, "The New World Order."

As such criticism arose, Reed deflected it by accusing its makers of being Christian-bashers. To prove his point Reed repeatedly made mention of a single article that had appeared in The Washington Post (and which the Post, reportedly, immediately corrected) which referred to religious evangelicals as "poor, uneducated, and easy to command."

In 2000, during the next elections, observers believe that Reed will lean toward moderation and away from extremists like Pat Buchanan. In support of this theory they call attention to how, in the 1996 South Carolina primary, Reed favored Dole over Buchanan until Phyllis Schafley of the Eagle Forum slapped his hand.

Robertson, it is said, is unhappy about the departure of his baby-faced "acolyte." The Christian Coalition will revert to Robertson's blustering, it is said, described by one fiscal conservative--with its conspiracy theories about gays and Jews--as looney.