The 2012 election is the most important election in our lifetime, Chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition Ralph Reed told Newsmax.TV in an exclusive interview, and evangelical Christians are now rallying around Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in “record numbers.”
Reed said that with trillion-dollar deficits, high unemployment, the election in November is the most important of his lifetime.
Watch the exclusive interview here.
“You know, we’ve had trillion dollar deficits for the four years of this administration. He’s going to double the national debt. In 10 years, he’s going to triple it beyond that. This bureaucratic, socialistic style model of approach has failed. We’ve had unemployment over eight percent for 42 months in a row, we’ve had unemployment over nine percent for 33 of those 42 months. During the recession, people lost lots of wealth but since the recession ended, according to the census bureau, the average middle class household has lost $2,000 in wealth. So if we don’t turn this around, we’re headed the way of Portugal, Spain and Greece.”
Adding to the economic woes, the Obama administration, Reed said, has chosen a war on religion.
“You look at this administration’s hostility to and insensitivity to the expression of faith; you look at the Health and Human Services’ mandate that forces Catholic and Christian and other religious charities, hospitals and institutions of higher learning to subsidize, with their money, healthcare services that they teach in their classrooms is morally wrong,” he said. “That violates their conscience. If you look at this administration going into federal court and saying that the Defense of Marriage Act, which was passed by a Republican Congress and signed into law by a Democratic president, namely Bill Clinton, they’ve gone in and said that that was unconstitutional.”
He continued, “Even when the Congress of the United States passed a resolution reaffirming that ‘In God We Trust’ is the official national motto of the United States, the president was dismissive of it, said it was a waste of time. It’s almost like he doesn’t understand that issues of morality and conscience and faith really matter to the overwhelming majority of the American people. So it’s unfortunate. You know, he ran saying that he was going to be much more open to conservative people of faith than prior Democratic presidents or presidential candidates and he’s really been the most extreme.”
Reed said that Romney has been embraced by evangelical Christians and is equal to where former President George W. Bush stood with the group on Election Day 2000.
“If you look at the Gallup poll, he’s at 65 percent among Evangelicals,” Reed said, referring to Romney. “If you look at the Pew Research Center poll, he’s at 71 percent. So he’s already about where McCain was before he picked [Sarah] Palin and he’s already about where George W. Bush was on Election Day 2000. I predict that Mitt Romney will get maybe just below the share of the evangelical vote that George W. Bush got in 2004. Bush got 78 percent of that vote. Romney’s going to be north of 75, a little south of 78.”
He continued, “The [Rep. Paul] Ryan pick helps enormously but, again, evangelicals are no different than other voters in the sense that they’re in the same failed economy. They’re feeling the pinch of unemployment, slow economic growth, an anemic economy, one out every four mortgage under water. And then, in addition to that, you’ve got the president’s flip flop on the marriage issue, you’ve got his HHS edict on religious institutions like Catholic hospitals and Christian colleges. So they’re coming. They’re coming in record numbers and they’re going to vote for the Romney-Ryan ticket.”
Evangelical and conservative Christians have already heard a lot of what they’ve wanted to hear from Romney, Reed said, so if he is able to hit on the same themes again on Thursday night, “it will serve him well.”
Reed said Romney has already clearly articulated his thoughts on morality and religious liberty.
“He said it at Liberty University when he made it clear that he believes that this election isn’t just about money, it’s also about morality. It’s not just about dollars and cents, it’s also about character, which I don’t necessarily mean the character of the respective candidates but the character of the American people. And he made it very clear when he spoke at Liberty University and delivered the commencement address that he believes in the institution of marriage as traditionally defined as between a man and a woman. He supports the sanctity of innocent human life. He believes in religious liberty. If he’s able to say some of those kinds of thing and connect Thursday night on values in addition to on the economy and on jobs, it will serve him well.”
Turning to the subject of abortion, Reed said there is a diversity of opinions within the Republican Party and that the GOP “has never nominated someone for president who didn’t either allow for or support exceptions in the case of rape and incest.”
“My personal view is that abortion should be confined to the life of the mother only,” Reed said. “That’s a situation where you have to make a hard and morally ambiguous, if not impossible, choice between two rights to life. One is the right of the mother, the other is the other of the unborn child. But, as you say, there’s a diversity of views on that. There’s frankly a diversity of views on abortion period.”
“The Republican Party platform calls for the protection of innocent human life through one of two means: one is a human life amendment to the Constitution, which I support but which, let’s be honest, would be very difficult to achieve,” he continued.
“You’d have to pass it by a two thirds majority in both the House and the Senate and it would have to be ratified by three quarters of the legislatures. Or, if not that, then the platform says by a court a ruling finding that an unborn child has a right to life under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. Our platform makes it clear we support either one and it, frankly, doesn’t specify which exceptions would be in any either one of those solutions. The Republican Party and, again, it’s not my position, but the Republican Party has never nominated someone for president who didn’t either allow for or support exceptions in the case of rape and incest. Ronald Reagan did, both Bushes did, McCain did, Dole did and Mitt Romney does.”
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