By most measures, Republicans shouldn’t even want to be in the same room as Ralph Reed. As Dave Weigel noted a while back, “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.”
Now, Reed is a major player at the Conservative Political Action Conference, and articles about him don’t even include Jack Abramoff’s name.
Ralph Reed, the powerful head of the socially conservative Faith and Freedom Coalition, said that Mitt Romney had made some inroads with evangelical Christians and other social conservatives since the start of the GOP campaign, but that the race was “wide open.”
“I think it’s a highly competitive race, very fluid, very topsy-turvy, and I don’t think we’ve seen our last roller coaster ride yet,” he said.
How, exactly, did Reed transform from the disgraced lobbyist caught up in the Abramoff scandal to right-wing GOP powerhouse? Well, it’s a funny story.
Reed waited. That’s it. He simply allowed time to elapse, confident that Republican officials, conservative activists, and the media would simply forget about his scandals and remember his organizing successes.
This worked remarkably well, but there’s still value in remembering his sleazy misdeeds.
Remember this one, from June 2006?









