Religious-right activist Ralph Reed appeared on "The Todd Starnes Show" yesterday to promote the upcoming Road To Majority conference, which is an annual event hosted by an organization Reed founded called the Faith & Freedom Coalition.
The event will feature a number of elected Republican officials as well as members of the Trump administration, all for the purpose of mobilizing conservative voters to ensure that the GOP maintains control of Congress in the upcoming elections.
Starnes worried that there is a "lethargy within the Republican Party" heading into the midterms and wondered what it is "going to take to light a fire under those voters, because we need everybody out and voting in the midterms."
"I wish it weren't the case," Reed replied, "but it is the case."
Reed said that Democratic voters are motivated by "negative energy" to topple the GOP and rein in President Donald Trump and, as a result, polls show that "the Democrats and the liberals enjoy a roughly 14 point advantage on turnout and enthusiasm."
"We've got a very short period of time to turn that around," Reed declared. "If we don't turn it around, it's going to be a very ugly picture in November, and people need to be reminded of what a Democratic House and Senate would look like."
"I've been telling people, 'I don't care how bad the Republicans have betrayed you or have not done what [they] said they would do,'" Starnes replied. "It's not about them. It's about protecting President Trump at the end of the day. And it's about protecting the Supreme Court."
Regardless of what happens in the election, Starnes said that the GOP is going to have to have a serious discussion about "what the future of the Republican Party looks like after Donald Trump and making sure that people of faith have a very firm role in shaping what that party looks like."
"I couldn't agree more," Reed said. "Self-identified born-again evangelicals are about half of the entire Republican vote. If you look at the votes that Donald Trump got—and he got about 77 million votes, give or take, in 2024—right at 43 million of those were born-again evangelicals."
"That doesn't even include mainline conservative Protestants who might not identify as born again evangelicals, and it doesn't include most pro-life Catholics," Reed continued. "So you put them in the mix, Todd, [and] it's about two-thirds of the Republican vote. And if they were raptured tomorrow, there wouldn't be a Republican party, so we've got to make sure that our role remains significant because there's no future without it."
