Next weekend, right before the FreedomWorks 9/12 march on Washington, Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition is holding its
inaugural conference
in Washington, D.C.
Launched in June 2009
, promoted by Reed as “not your daddy’s Christian Coalition,” this is a pretty incredible return to relevance for Reed, who was counted for dead when the Jack Abramoff scandal cost him the 2006 lieutenant governor GOP primary in Georgia. Among the speakers who’ve confirmed they’ll be there: Four members of Congress (Lynn Westmoreland, Randy Forbes, Thaddeus McCotter, Tom Price), Gov. Bob McDonnell, kind-of-sort-of 2012 presidential hopeful Rick Santorum, Karl Rove, Newt Gingrich, Grover Norquist, and Tucker Carlson. Tea Party Patriots leaders Jenny Beth Martin and Mark Meckler are on deck, as is RedState’s kingmaker/blogger Erick Erickson.
I’ll say it again: Reed was supposed to be dead, dead, dead. His 2006 defeat was covered as the effective end of a 45-year-old political strategist who was forever tainted by scandal. The fact that Reed could hunker down, write some novels, and relaunch an organization that conservatives are willing to sign up with is spectacular. Not that I have any idea what this organization actually does, apart from a congressional vote scorecard. For example, can someone explain this petition to me?