Word: reed
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Last year the religious right suffered a fiasco because of George Bush's defeat. Robertson and Reed had assumed early on that Bush would narrowly edge out Clinton. Thus, although they had little affection for Bush, they helped check the movement of social conservatives toward Pat Buchanan. Their expectation was that Christian Coalition would get credit, and legitimacy, for securing the critical margin of support. In exchange, Bush's handlers accepted many of Reed's choices for delegates to the convention and allowed the religious right to pack the platform committee. The upshot: Bush seemed a prisoner of his party...
...take over G.O.P. committees, ousting complacent regulars indifferent to the coalition's Bible-based agenda. In some intraparty contests, as well as races for public offices, the coalition's candidates kept quiet about their affiliation. Close to Election Day, bursts of church-centered politicking showed what was going on. Reed made the mistake of bragging in a few interviews about what became known as "stealth tactics," talking up the political benefits of guerrilla methods. "You don't know it's over," he once said of unsuspecting opponents, "until you're in a body bag." That inflammatory language made...
...their pews -- from which they would supply votes but not leadership -- the religious right's image as sinister, rigid and exclusionary was excellent material. Ditto for liberal opponents like People for the American Way, which monitors the religious right and scores points from its every excess. After the election, Reed scurried to recoup. "This stealth thing is bad for the movement," he announced. "It isn't the future. It's the past, if anything." Reed struggled to practice diversity, conservative style. When he opened a Washington lobbying office, he appointed a Jew, Marshall Wittmann, to head it. In last spring...
...frenetic time in his life. He was finishing his senior thesis and preparing to move to a new job with the National College Republicans. In between, he got himself fired from the Red and Black for plagiarism. At the College Republicans' national convention, Reed helped defeat a moderate by targeting his preppy garb; Reed gave out hundreds of buttons showing a pink tie with a red line through it. Rebecca Hagelin, a protege then and still a friend, says Reed was considered "the best practitioner of kiddie politics" but was so "addicted to the excitement" that he frequently strayed across...
After a successful stint as executive director of the College Republicans, Reed moved from Washington to Raleigh and set up a conservative organization with an evangelical tint, Students for America. In 1984 North Carolina offered the country's hottest Senate race, Jesse Helms vs. Jim Hunt, and Reed wanted his new group to be in on the action. It was at the Helms victory party that a pretty 16-year-old Helms volunteer introduced herself to Reed. Jo Anne Young thought he was about 19 and "really cute." It would be nearly two years before they had their first official...