Word: reeding
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Today Reed strives, by his lights at least, to make politics serve those causes as executive director of Christian Coalition, the advocacy group founded by Pat Robertson four years ago. Reed's organizational and strategic talents have made the coalition the most potent unit within what its leaders call the profamily movement. He is also becoming a prophet and a public promoter of the conservative Christian cause in general. When he experiences an epiphany these days, the event is complex and political rather than religious and personal. His changing visions become the subject of TV schmooze shows and Washington seminars...
This week Christian Coalition holds its annual Road to Victory conference. For the first time, the gathering of 2,000 cultural warriors will be in Washington rather than Virginia Beach, and will be open to press coverage. To overcome the group's conspiratorial image, Reed decided on the motif of a coming-out party. In a bow to political ecumenism, he persuaded David Wilhelm, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, to be the token liberal among dozens of conservative speakers. The movement remains overwhelmingly white and has roots in the backlash against the civil rights revolution; so Reed commissioned...
...Reed's goal is to give the movement a gentler, more catholic visage. He wants to make peace with mainstream Republicans while continuing the movement's war with secular liberals. The religious right must broaden its agenda, he believes, because "we have allowed ourselves to be ghettoized by a narrow band of issues like abortion, homosexual rights and prayer in school." Even the majority of Evangelicals, he argues, are more interested in taxes, crime and the quality of education. Becoming more ecumenical will entail making alliances of convenience with conventional conservatives who, for example, do not favor outlawing abortion. This...
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...