Global Courant
Biden needs India as an ally against China and that priority outweighed the instinct to shun Modi because of his creeping authoritarianism.
We talk about this debate all the time when it comes to US foreign policy.
But sometimes that same debate becomes central to American domestic politics as well.
And on the other side of town, just as Modi was finishing his joint address to Congress, evangelical conservatives from across the country converged on the Washington Hilton to hear from their own flawed partner: Donald Trump.
Well, not just Trump, actually – Mike Pence, Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott, Chris Christie and every major Republican nominee is scheduled to speak at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority conference.
But of course Trump is what religious conservatives talk about. After all, he is the dominant front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination. And he’s the keynote speaker for the group at their Saturday night gala dinner. And he is also the politician about whom two things can be said:
First, his personal and public life makes a mockery of the Christian ideals of evangelical voters.
And second, he is the person who has won more policy victories for the same voters than any other president.
The questions evangelicals are discussing in Washington this week are whether that deal with Trump was worth it… and whether they should renew the contract.
This week’s guest has many thoughts on this. He is the founder and president of the Faith & Freedom Coalition, Ralph Reed.
Reed was recruited in 1989 by Pat Robertson, the late televangelist, to lead a new organization: the Christian Coalition.
It grew into a powerful political group that solidified social conservatives as a core Republican Party constituency and made issues such as opposition to abortion rights non-negotiable policies in the GOP.
As you will hear in this episode, Ralph Reed is a political junkie. He left the Christian Coalition in 1997 and quickly became one of George W. Bush’s chief strategists.
And then, in Obama’s first term, Reed struck up an unlikely friendship with a man named Donald Trump.
He did for Trump what he does for any presidential candidate who comes to him for advice: He explained how to win over evangelical voters, who make up about 60 percent of the Republican presidential primary electorate.
According to him, it worked quite well: evangelicals overwhelmingly supported the thrice-married New York playboy who was famous for screwing up Bible verses on the stump. And Trump kept his word when it came to their most important issue: appointing Supreme Court justices to overturn Roe v. Wade.
So what will evangelicals do in the 2024 Republican presidential primary?
That’s the question Ryan Lizza, Playbook co-author and Deep Dive host, was talking to Reed in a back room of the Washington Hilton as his conference attendees came in.
