Word: reeding
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...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...
...Reed went to Emory on a scholarship, intending to switch to academic life for good because he had decided that politics was unstable as a career. His dissertation, on the early history of church-related colleges, is still remembered. "It was a first-rate piece of work," says Professor James Roark, "but I'm not sure Ralph would want it published today." The paper criticized some sectarian schools for trading off their religious heritage in exchange for endowments. In fact, Reed is proud of its argument: that traditional Christian values -- as born-again conservatives define them -- deserve to be protected...
...same cause lured Reed back to politics. In January 1989, when they met for the first time at a Washington banquet, Robertson told Reed of his plans for a new organization. Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority was about to collapse. George Bush's accession threatened a return of country-club Republicanism. Reed had supported Jack Kemp rather than Robertson in the 1988 primaries, but no matter. Robertson knew of Reed's religious conversion; Robertson's cable show, The 700 Club, had done a piece on it. He also knew Reed's reputation as a conservative organizer. Reed wrote a memorandum...