The business of saving souls has always had its charlatans. In the United States, the religious right often seems to serve up more than its share. Take Ralph Reed, for example. The political operative who rose to fame as executive director of the now-defunct Christian Coalition, Reed has long used his evangelical cred to feed his for-profit businesses, as he did when lobbyist Jack Abramoff hired Reed’s firm, Century Strategies, to rally his Christian soldiers to oppose the casino-building plans of one American Indian tribe in order to serve the gambling interests of a competing tribe. (This scheme, along with others, landed Abramoff in prison for bribery.) It should come as no surprise, then, to find him as a lead evangelist for Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
Today, Ralph Reed heads the Faith and Freedom Coalition, yet another religious-right organization treated as a credible institution by both the media and right-wing evangelical Christians. For Reed, the nonprofit organization maintains his place as a leader of the faithful, a place that is critical to his ability to bring in business to his for-profit political consulting firms, Century Strategies and Millennium Marketing.
Reed would have you believe that he began his friendship with Trump seven years ago because of the tycoon’s change of heart on the matter of abortion, but I’d personally bet it was the gambling. And the money....
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/trump-lays-bare-moral-bankruptcy-religious-right
No comments:
Post a Comment