people as the enemy. these are the folks that they no longer represent. so what is so odd is if you actually go to the teachings of jesus christ, you will find the exact reverse, and that is the people that supposedly evangelical christians if you look them at their word would be most interested in reaching out and folding into their party would be poor disenfranchised single moms, for instance, stuck with no child care because of the cutbacks, and all of the rest of it. instead of that, they speak for corporate america. they speak for big-time religious organizations that rake in billions of dollars off gullible lower class middle americans who have no idea that people like ralph reed are just con men. and they meet together once a year not to win elections, but to advance their own agenda within a subculture that no longer represents mainstream america. and as you know, if you read crazy for god , my memoir and why i left this group, it s
well, it will be a huge problem for two reasons. one, theological and ideological. these guys can t budge because this is part of their faith. they ve included in their faith now the kind of karl rove agenda of big business and corporate america and capitalism. so, they re totally stuck. but i want to say something else. there are republican agitators and extremists like ralph reed, who are now also in it just for the money. look, he claimed he got $11 million. you can be sure he took a nice, big cut off the top of that to get out the evangelical vote. like karl rove, who will keep coming back like a bad lunch, they aren t going to go away. why? because there s big money in sucker-punching evangelicals into thinking you can deliver a vote for them. how do i know that? as i talk about in my book crazy for god i was one of those guys 30 years ago, raising millions of dollars from people like rich, who founded amway, promising him we could change
gop party. it was the evangelical party perhaps more than any single element in the last election cycle that peeled off so many voters who were just tired of the extremism, the masogony, the anti-woman platform, anti-abortion platform which many evangelicals hold as right wing tea party, many of these things. just as i trace in my book crazy for god the evangelicals have dug themselves a very deep pit they can t negotiate out of. in the last election cycle they were held by the right wing roman catholic bishops who inexplicably threw their hat in the ring with republicans overtly saying obama was, as you remember, reverend, because we did a program about this yes, we did. anti-religious. they called him anti-religious. the roman catholic bishops, evangelicals are totally ineffective and can the republican party move past that? not on your life. let me show you some reaction
courts to accept islamic shariah law in domestic disputes, that he will force police agency to allow muslim brotherhood to select staff. i mean, this is some ugly stuff. yeah, it is. it s what ralph reed and the religious right and right wing of ivevangelicals have made a habit of all the way back when they accused john mccain of having an illegitimate black child. the worst part of that accusation is, oh, this child is black. the kind of folks who go for this only have one thing against barack obama, that he s black and not a republican conservative. those two things in that order. all the rest is window dressing. when you get to this segment. and so someone like ralph reed is the kind of person i m talking about in my book crazy for god who has sold the republican party down the river. i used to be a republican. the republican party is not my
military. joining me now is a columnist from the huffington post and author of crazy for god does this episode highlight the power of the far right, social conservatives, and the gop? yes, and it s part of a pattern. and that is that the republican party used to have fringe activist like me when i was in the religious right, which i write about in my book, why i got out of the religious right about 30 years ago now. we were on the fringe, now the fringe has taken over the party, and when you have someone like mitt romney who, either is or pretends to be more moderate, when a conflict comes up with the folks who a anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-african-american, he will throw his hat into the ring