Recycled

A Weak Reed

Why Ralph Reed lost the GOP’s confidence.

Former Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed has conceded defeat in his bid to gain the GOP’s nomination for Georgia lieutenant governor. Shady multimillion-dollar deals between Reed and disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff may have caused the party to spurn him as Slate’s John Dickerson suggested it might in June. “Reed’s campaign to become lieutenant governor of Georgia is still thriving, but let’s see what happens when the evangelicals he once served absorb the evidence in the Senate report. It’s damning,” Dickerson wrote. “It depicts an enterprise that used religious voters as marks: Lobbyists effortlessly twisted them to achieve goals sometimes directly at odds with their beliefs. They were punk’d.”