Bill Berkowitz
October 3, 2006

GOP defeat could benefit conservatives, says Richard Viguerie

Viguerie, a New Right founding father and king of conservative direct mail, is angry about the GOP's wayward leadership and he's calling on his troops to stand down

While a host of conservative Christian evangelical leaders were trying to energize the Republican Party's grassroots base at their Value Voters Summit a few weeks back, Richard Viguerie was sending a different message to conservatives. While he isn't advocating a GOP defeat in November, Viguerie, one of the founding fathers of the modern conservative movement, recently told progressive radio talk show host Laura Flanders, that he has "lived long enough" so that he "no longer fear[s] defeat...Many times, if not most of the times, our best success has come after defeat."

Agreeing with Flanders' characterization of the Bush White House as corrupt and immoral, Viguerie maintained that Bush has "done very little in the way of governing as a conservative."

"The core difference between a conservative and a liberal Laura, it is the role of government in our lives." The president has made "no serious effort to abolish any significant government program," Viguerie said.

Viguerie's stance is not new. It is, however, getting a lot more play than it did two years ago when, in an interview on PBS's "Now" less than a week before the November 2004 election, Viguerie told then-co-host Bill Moyers that after Bush won, "somewhere around ... the morning after the election ... the war starts for the heart and soul" of the Republican Party. "It's gonna be a war," Viguerie said. A war "between the traditional conservatives, those who identify with Ronald Reagan, people like myself. And, the big government Republicans. And then also maybe the Neo-cons."

While admitting that he was supporting Bush and would vote for him, Viguerie, the undisputed king of conservative direct mail, added: "When the voting is done and the ballots are counted, then we're going to choose up sides and fight for the heart and souls of the Republican Party."

"It would be on our side, the traditional conservatives [against] the other side, people like Rudy Giuliani, Governor of New York, Pataki, Arnold Schwarzenegger. It's going to be an interesting battle. Normally Bill, it wouldn't be a fair fight," Viguerie told Moyers. "Cause we've got the troops, we've got the organization...the resources, the issues. One thing we lack, a horse. We've got no horse. Hopefully, someone will come on the scene soon. But, but we had a lot of advantages when we came along."

"When Goldwater was defeated in '64, Nixon's resignation in '74, Ford's defeat in '76. Swept away most of the older Republican leaders," Viguerie pointed out.

"Those defeats were cathartic," Moyers noted. "Absolutely," Viguerie said. "And it allowed younger ones, people like Newt Gingrich and Ed Feulner and other young conservatives to rise up to positions of leadership that normally would have taken another 20 years to happen."

It took nearly two years, but Viguerie's prediction may finally be coming to fruition.

In the October issue of the Washington Monthly, "seven prominent conservatives dare to speak the unspeakable: They hope the Republicans lose in 2006." The seven essays, posted under the title, "Time For Us To Go: Conservatives on why the GOP should lose in 2006," feature commentaries from: Christopher Buckley -- "Let's quit while we're behind"; Bruce Bartlett -- "Bring on Pelosi"; Joe Scarborough -- And we thought Clinton had no self-control"; William A. Niskanen -- "Give divided government a chance"; Bruce Fein -- "Restrain this White House"; Jeffrey Hart -- "Idéologie has taken over"; and Richard A. Viguerie -- "The show must not go on."

"Of course, all of them [the writers] wish for the long-term health of conservatism, and most are loyal to the GOP. What they also believe, however, is that even if a Speaker Pelosi looms in the wings, sometimes the best remedy for a party gone astray is to give it a session in the time-out chair," the introduction to the forum maintains.

While all of these men have strong conservative credentials, none of them represent conservative evangelical Christians, who remain adamant about sticking with the president. One of the essayists who over the years has successfully bridged the gap between social and economic conservatives is Richard Viguerie.

In addition to his Washington Monthly essay, Viguerie, the Chairman of American Target Advertising, Inc., and the president of ConservativeHQ.com: The Conservative Headquarters, Viguerie, who has obviously been chewing on these ideas for at least two years, has written a new book on the same subject, transparently titled "Conservatives Betrayed: How George W. Bush and Other Big Government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause" (Bonus Books, 2006).

It's not that Viguerie has joined the renegade evangelical Christians pastors in signing on to the Evangelical Climate Initiative; nor is he advocating new and more comprehensive programs for the poor.

In fact, Viguerie basically believes he hasn't left the GOP, it is the GOP that has abandoned its ideals and left him. According to the book's promotional materials, "Can the marriage between conservatives and the Republican Party be saved?"

The book:

"documents exactly how the Republican Party -- under President Bush's leadership -- has betrayed conservatives and conservatism on most fronts
"lays out a plan for conservatives to once again take control of the Republican Party from the Big Government Republicans
"shows how conservatives can move all public policy to the right (including the Democratic Party) by acting like a third force -- but not a third party
"explains how conservatives got into this mess, and how we will achieve a rebirth of conservatism"

In his Washington Monthly essay, Viguerie wrote:

"With their record over the past few years, the Big Government Republicans in Washington do not merit the support of conservatives. They have busted the federal budget for generations to come with the prescription-drug benefit and the creation and expansion of other programs. They have brought forth a limitless flow of pork for the sole, immoral purpose of holding onto office. They have expanded government regulation into every aspect of our lives and refused to deal seriously with mounting domestic problems such as illegal immigration. They have spent more time seeking the favors of K Street lobbyists than listening to the conservatives who brought them to power. And they have sunk us into the very sort of nation-building war that candidate George W. Bush promised to avoid, while ignoring rising threats such as communist China and the oil-rich ‘new Castro,' Hugo Chavez."

Viguerie argued that over the past 40-plus years, when conservative candidates were soundly defeated it led toward building the movement.

The resounding defeat suffered by Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater at the hands of Lyndon Johnson in 1964, "cleared a lot of dead wood out of the Republican Party...[which] made it easier for us to increase our influence on the GOP, utilizing new technology, more effective techniques, and fresh ideas."

Likewise, "the Watergate scandal in 1974 eliminated more of the Republican officeholders who had stood in the way of creating a more broad-based party, ...dramatically weakening the party establishment, [without which] Ronald Reagan would never have been able to mount a nearly-successful challenge, two years later, to an incumbent president of his own party."

The defeat of Jimmy Carter showed the country that conservatives -- led by Reagan -- could win elections, and win them big.

And, the 1992 election of Bill Clinton "led directly to the Republican takeover two years later."

"Sometimes" Viguerie maintained, "a loss for the Republican Party is a gain for conservatives. Often, a little taste of liberal Democrats in power is enough to remind the voters what they don't like about liberal Democrats and to focus the minds of Republicans on the principles that really matter. That's why the conservative movement has grown fastest during those periods when things seemed darkest, such as during the Carter administration and the first two years of the Clinton White House."

Not everyone is taking Viguerie's message to heart. "Conservative Christians are somewhat disenchanted with Republicans," Kenyn Cureton, vice president for convention relations with the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest Protestant denomination with nearly 16 million members, recently told the Associated Press. But there was no indication from Cureton that he was advocating that conservatives sit out the election.

While expressing his frustration at the Republican Party during the Stand for the Family rally at the Mellon Arena in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday, September 20, Dr. James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, told the estimated 3,000 people in attendance that despite his misgivings, they should stick with the GOP.

"I have flat-out been ticked at Republicans for the past two years," he said. But, "this country is at a crisis point. Whether or not the Republicans deserve the power they were given, the alternatives are downright frightening."

As Frederick Clarkson, author of the book "Eternal Hostility:The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy" (Common Courage Press, 1997), observed in a late-August posting at the Talk To Action blog, "Although Viguerie is calling for the movement to pull back from the GOP for now, he seems to be arguing that conservatives need to reorganize and become a stronger force in the GOP rather than bolt" to Howard Phillips' Constitution Party or any other third party effort.

In 2001, when Karl Rove and Bush "came to town ... they seemed to adopt a one-word strategy for government and that one-word strategy is bribery," Viguerie told Laura Flanders. "The legal theft that the Republicans have engaged is immoral."

"Forty to fifty percent of the conservative leaders that I talk to at the national and state level either want the Republican to lose in November, or are ambivalent about it."

Since the beginning of the movement, "We took the long range view. We didn't put all our eggs in any one election. We said that this isn't a sprint, it's a marathon." Viguerie said that he's telling his conservative friends not "to fear defeat." After all, GOP loses in 1964, 1974, 1976 and 1992 "cleaned out a lot of dead wood" from the Republican Party.