Ralph Reed To the Rescue!

Way to get even further off-message, Sen. McCain! Have the disgraced Ralph Reed go on C-SPAN this a.m. and declare that no one is interested in how rich you are.

Who is Ralph Reed and why is his opinion important?

Are we talking the disgraced former head of the Christian Coalition? The man who subsequently ran for lieutenant governor of Georgia in 2006 but was soundly defeated in the Republican primary after his connections to Jack Abramoff came out? (Well, hey, one of his earliest paid jobs was as an intern for Abramoff, so you've got to expect a few friendly crumbs to eventually fall from the table!) The Ralph Reed who first got his name in the papers in 1983 while he was a student at the University of Georgia? He got his butt fired off the student paper for plagiarizing a column attacking Gandhi (of all people) and sorta set the standard for the kind of sleaze that has characterized him ever since.

The Ralph Reed who earlier this month hosted a fundraiser for John McCain, in a double-bid to get closer to potential power while trying to induce the public to forget all the past scandals?

Yes, him.

He told us this a.m. on C-SPAN that McCain's failure to grasp economic realities, either his own or anybody else's, was just not something that the American people were interested in.