Free Takeover by Richard A. Viguerie Page A

GOP vice presidential nominee. With Dole on the ticket, Rockefeller, the long time antagonist of conservatives, would be gone, but power would remain firmly in the hands of the GOP’s “dime store New Dealers” and Great Society–lite Capitol Hill establishment.
    In 1976 Ronald Reagan may not have realized that he wasn’t merely competing for the Party’s presidential nomination; he was engaged in an all-out war for the soul of the GOP.
    The Republican establishment understood the game, and just like in 1964, they had already decided they would rather lose than put a conservative in, or anywhere near, the Oval Office.

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THE NEW RIGHT AND REAGAN’S 1980 VICTORY
    W e had come tantalizingly close to getting a conservative candidate for president—Ronald Reagan—nominated in 1976.
    When Ronald Reagan lost at the 1976 Republican National Convention, we conservatives understood that Reagan didn’t lose because the delegates rejected conservative ideas—he lost because once again conservatives were outfoxed and outgunned in Republican Convention politics.
    Far from being out of favor or declining in political support, we knew conservative ideas, especially those advocated by what came to be known as the “New Right,” were gaining in political and cultural influence.
    Reagan campaigned for President Ford in more than twenty states, but he also took $1 million of his remaining campaign funds and established an organization called Citizens for the Republic, “to speak out for Republicanism and how we had strayed from the visions of our founding fathers.” 1
    Ronald Reagan’s creation of Citizens for the Republic was very much in keeping with the spirit of the times, and the feeling among many conservatives that the old ways and old vehicles for transmittingour ideas needed a serious update—as did the Republican Party.
    There were many reasons for the rise of the New Right, but one of the most important (and one that gets little treatment in the popular history of the political forces that ultimately put Ronald Reagan in the White House) was conservative disillusionment with the leadership of the Old Right and the establishment Republican Party.
    The rise of the New Right was as much a rebellion against the ineffectiveness and go-along-get-along policies of the Republican establishment, particularly on détente with the Soviet Union and social spending, as it was a fight against the Democrats. Our disillusionment with the Republican establishment ran deep, and was comparable to the disillusionment supporters of the Tea Party feel today with the failures of the establishment Republican Party.
    In 1972 Lee Edwards invited me to lunch at the Mayflower Hotel to meet Morton Blackwell, who was then at the American Enterprise Institute. A week or so later Morton and I got back together for lunch at the Mayflower, and Morton later said I spoke “magic words” to him—I invited him to come to work for me at the Viguerie Company to help me build the conservative movement. Morton also later admitted that even though the job involved a small pay increase, he would have taken it with a pay cut.
    Morton, and his wife, Helen, soon became close friends. Morton went on to found the Leadership Institute, train thousands of young conservatives in the art and science of politics, and is now one of the key players in the conservative movement. He has also been my friend, advisor, and wise counselor for over forty years. (See appendix 3 for Morton Blackwell’s Laws of the Public Policy Process.)
    After Morton had been in Washington for a year or two, he expressed his amazement and disappointment that Senators Goldwater, Thurmond, Tower, and the other conservatives on Capitol Hill didn’t meet every day, or every week, or every month, or even once a year to plan strategy and coordinate conservative action on issues.
    What Morton and I saw was that the longtime conservative members of Congress would show up on Tuesday, get beat two to