Ralph Reed Joins Health Care Fight

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


As the future of health care reform seems to be coming down to the very last wire, the high-stakes political battle seems to be drawing out of the woodwork long lost activists and groups once associated with the disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramhoff. Yesterday we noted the participation of the National Center for Public Policy Research, which has put out some slick new campaign materials for health care opponents. That group was accused of flacking for Abramhoff clients in exchange for big donations. Today comes none other than Ralph Reed, the former Christian Coalition leader who helped Republicans take over Congress in 1994 but then crashed and burned after revelations about his work for Abramhoff. (Reed famously took millions from an Indian tribe represented by Abramhoff to run a religious-based anti-gambling campaign that was actually designed to prevent a rival tribe from opening a competing casino.)

Reed is now head of a new group called the Faith and Freedom Coalition, which today sent out an appeal to readers of WorldNet Daily soliciting “FaxGrams of Protest” against Obamacare to members of Congress. The email comes with all the doomsday predictions about the bill. Reed writes, “This vote is happening any day or hour now. It is do or die for freedom’s survival in America! We are now at D-Day for Obamacare. Will America become another failed Cuba-style Socialist state? Or will freedom and respect for Constitutional government make a comeback in America? The next few hours and days will answer that question.”

Links from the WND email lead through Reed’s website. Naturally, this being a Reed endeavor, the fax grams don’t come free. In order to send one, health care opponents have to provide a credit card number to make a “donation” to the Faith and Freedom Coalition. Whether Reed is simply capitalizing on the health care debate to raise money or whether he’s been hired by some desperate anti-health care forces to fight the bill isn’t clear. (Could be both.) But one thing’s for sure: If Indian tribes start to chime in, we should really start to get suspicious. 

WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate