Richard Viguerie is known as the “Funding Father” of the modern-day conservative movement for his pioneering success in harnessing the power of direct mail fundraising from millions of small-dollar donors in the 1970s and 1980s.  So his thoughts on the current predicament conservatives find themselves in should be taken strongly into consideration.

“It’s obvious that conservatives have a GOP problem,” Viguerie writes in his 2006 book Conservatives Betrayed.  “On the one hand, we have to work within the two-party framework of American democracy in order to be effective and not be marginalized. . . . On the other hand, putting all of our marbles on the Republican side hasn’t worked either, as we’ve seen since 2000. . . . Republican lawmakers talk conservative, but vote for bigger and more intrusive government.  They’ve been getting away with this – so far – because they think conservatives have nowhere else to go.”

Gee, sounds an awful lot like Nevada, doesn’t it?

“Instead of creating a new party,” Viguerie continues, “we conservatives need to think of ourselves as a Third Force – an independent outside force that holds both parties accountable for their actions.  This is not a pipe dream – we’ve done it before.

“In the 1970s, the ‘New Right’ was becoming so successful precisely because its leaders thought of themselves – not the Republican Party – as the alternative to the Left and the Democrats.  And during the second half of the 1970s and the early 1980s, this alternative New Right leadership planned strategy every Wednesday at my McLean, Virginia home.

“For six or seven years, the New Right independent operatives would meet for a breakfast session.  For a couple of years, those sessions were followed by evening gatherings where we would be joined by six or seven key Republican congressmen, with Newt Gingrich as their leader.  The organizational leaders thought of themselves as the ‘outside’ leadership group, with the congressmen as the movement’s ‘inside’ leadership.

“For another example, some of the greatest conservative successes over the years have come with independent single-issue groups that have managed to take liberal issues off the table – perhaps the ultimate in political success.  Phyllis Schlafly’s ‘Stop ERA’ took the proposed Equal Rights Amendment off the table in the 1980s, and more recently, the National Rifle Association took the ‘gun control’  issue off the table.

“The critical strategic point is that they battled for bipartisan support of their aims, and held politicians of both parties responsible for their votes.  The fact that the conservative cause triumphed on these issues is my interest, and I say it’s time to let 1,000 new conservative single-issue organizations bloom.”

Hmmm.  Breakfast at my house next week?

Several years ago, Marvin and Veronica moved here from a nearby state and told everyone they met that they were “so excited” to live in “such a beautiful place” full of “such wonderful, friendly, caring people.”  Marvin soon got a job with the County and began “working to improve things” using government monies and volunteer help and contributions.

So today he tells me, “I can’t wait to get out of this place.”

Why?  Because the town is now full of obstinate, backward, stupid people who don’t know anything about government and who obstruct his agenda at every turn.

A liberal?  You betcha.

I always laugh to read his articles in the paper, extolling this project or the other.  A perfect example is a new “tree barrier” along a roadside adjacent to one of our municipal facilities.  The trees were intended to block the unsightly row of cars and trucks parked between the road and the buildings.  To read about it in the articles he has put into the local newspaper extolling “community efforts,” you’d expect to find a verdant forest.   When you drive by, however, you find a row of very small, withered trees, spaced too far apart, which, if anything, make the site look even more run down and neglected.  In 25 years, should they survive, they might partially filter the view.  A fence would have made more sense.  Why didn’t they do a privacy fence?  Because it would “block the distant view.”  Of course, the large facility buildings already do that.

Currently he is involved in a fight with the City over a maintenance issue that damaged one of his properties.  The City says it isn’t responsible because there is no ordinance covering such maintenance, and for that reason, the government agency that insures the City denied his claim.

What would a conservative (i.e., native) do?

Pay for the damage, do the due diligence on the maintenance himself, and write a letter to the Editor letting others know of this issue so that those who wished to do so could pressure the City to update its ordinances.  And attend City Council meetings, keeping the issue alive until resolved.

A liberal?

He moves away in disgust.

Because, ultimately, it was always “all about him” and had nothing to do with us.

Study this.

Cordially,

E.

I don’t talk much about my faith here on E!!  but as a Christian conservative with a libertarian streak, I am always interested in these kinds of debates.  Generally speaking I’m a social and cultural conservative, but I am cautious about state-mandated morality (because it can cut both ways) and often find myself defending freedom itself as an important right and virtue.

This is because I believe that (1) God grants us freedom and free will, (2) God grants us free will for a reason, and (3) Jesus Christ was not an Authoritarian. 

Free will is meaningless if people aren’t free to choose wrong as well as right, evil as well as good.  (Please don’t interpret this to mean I support anarchy; I don’t.)  We can and should legislate behavior to keep people from unduly harming one another, but we really can’t legislate matters of morality and conscience and spirit.  A man’s heart and mind cannot be taken by force; he must give it freely.

Jesus never strong-armed or forced anyone into listening to him, following him, or believing in him.  He spoke the truth with grace, closed his remarks with something pithy like “go and sin no more,” and that was basically it.  You were either touched and moved by what he said or not – but he didn’t chase you down the street, and he didn’t appeal to Rome to turn the Beautitudes into the law of the land. 

Anyway, check out Hoven’s piece and let me know what you think about his views.  I’d be interested to hear from so-cons as well as libertarians.

Hat Tip:  Derb, who provides the column’s four paragraph close

And I LOVE the idea of Michael Steele as national chair of the RNC.  (Or Newt.)

In short, the Republican party became undisciplined, greedy, weak and ineffective.  This dirtied and eroded the Republican brand such that it became unrecognizable and uninspiring. 

We need new leadership.  We need new voices and/or the renewing and rejuvination of existing voices.  Our elected officials need to stop concerning themselves with power grabs, pandering, and placating.  We must unapologetically and unashamedly stand on True Conservative values.

We need to get back to basics and get on message, recognizing that effective and persuasive communication matters.  As Laura Ingraham said today, “We must cultivate a new generation of leaders who are both proud of their conservative beliefs and comfortable articulating them with vision, clarify and optimism.” 

I hereby invoke part of Russell Kirk’s introduction to Ten Conservative Principles:

Perhaps it would be well, most of the time, to use this word “conservative” as an adjective chiefly. For there exists no Model Conservative, and conservatism is the negation of ideology: it is a state of mind, a type of character, a way of looking at the civil social order.

The attitude we call conservatism is sustained by a body of sentiments, rather than by a system of ideological dogmata. It is almost true that a conservative may be defined as a person who thinks himself such. The conservative movement or body of opinion can accommodate a considerable diversity of views on a good many subjects, there being no Test Act or Thirty-Nine Articles of the conservative creed.

In essence, the conservative person is simply one who finds the permanent things more pleasing than Chaos and Old Night. (Yet conservatives know, with Burke, that healthy “change is the means of our preservation.”) A people’s historic continuity of experience, says the conservative, offers a guide to policy far better than the abstract designs of coffee-house philosophers.

I have always loved Kirk’s Ten and that intro.  Not an ideology but ”a state of mind, a type of character, a way of looking at the social order.”

Conservatives are skeptical of change for its own sake and will always pause to ask, “but what are the unintended consequences?”  Conservatives value that which has been good, and is good, and are not eager to dismiss that good in favor of untested new ideas.  Conservatives are open minded but cautious.  Social experiments are looked upon with great skepticism.  As Kirk later writes:

Therefore the intelligent conservative endeavors to reconcile the claims of Permanence and the claims of Progression. He thinks that the liberal and the radical, blind to the just claims of Permanence, would endanger the heritage bequeathed to us, in an endeavor to hurry us into some dubious Terrestrial Paradise. The conservative, in short, favors reasoned and temperate progress; he is opposed to the cult of Progress, whose votaries believe that everything new necessarily is superior to everything old.

Just so.

Let me be clear that I have no issue with Buckley’s complaints against and dissatisfaction with the Republican party.  In these things I agree with him and am similarly disgruntled.

My criticism was not of the fact that Buckley left National Review; it was the way he left.

And, though his vote is his own, I don’t think it makes sense to show your disgust for the lack of conservatism in the GOP by voting for the candidate/party who has even less of it.

UPDATE:  As for the “shunning” of conservatives like Buckley, I have to agree with what Rich Lowry said just a bit ago, mentioning both Kathleen and Peggy Noonan:

In her Palin-centered column, Peggy says those “whose thoughts lead them to criticism in this area are to be shunned, and accused of the lowest motives,” and then cites Christopher’s resignation from his NR column as an example. Peggy is a busy person, so I suppose she hasn’t had time to notice that Kathleen Parker’s columns ripping Sarah Palin have appeared on NRO. That David Frum has aired his discontent with the Palin pick on NRO. That others of us—Ramesh and even me (between my occasional bouts of rhapsodic gushing!)—have criticized aspects of her performance. And that other writers on NRO have stuck up for Palin and pushed back against the critics. It’s called debate.

Now, I regret how some conservatives immediately question the motives of the critics of Palin, but it’s equally regrettable that Noonan, Parker et al are portraying most conservatives as irrational thugs. It makes you wonder: Who is really being overly emotional and deeply unfair in this intra-mural conservative debate? Which brings us naturally to Kathleen Parker’s column today. Read and judge for yourself. Is this calm, cool deliberation? Or hyperbole worthy of a peeved e-mailer? (By the way, I hate that Kathleen got any abusive e-mails at all; it’s a very unfortunate part of the world of the web. But hate e-mail goes both ways. I wouldn’t want to live for a minute with, say, Kathryn Lopez’s or Jonah Goldberg’s in-box on any given day.)

Finally, on Christopher, I already addressed it here. But he proffered a “sincere offer” of resignation of his column that he had taken up temporarily while Mark Steyn was on hiatus. It struck us as a win-win: Chris would get out of a column we thought he wanted out of; we’d get Mark Steyn, who had recently returned to writing, back on our back page. We never imagined Chris would feel he’d been “fatwa-ed.” In any case, Chris is still on NR’s board, and is welcome to write pieces for us going forward, which I’m hoping he’ll do after everyone, very much including the Noonans and Parkers of the world, takes a deep breath.

And BTW, I posted on what Peggy Noonan said earlier over at Culture11’s LadyBlog.

It starts with this quote:

“The financial crisis is not the crisis of capitalism.  It is the crisis of a system that has distanced itself from the most fundamental values of capitalism, which betrayed the spirit of capitalism.”
        — Nicolas Sarkozy

and includes gems like:

The fundamental morality of capitalism lies in the voluntary nature of its trades, consented to by all parties, and therefore providing a gain to all.

and

Vigorous work is praiseworthy but should be accompanied by equally vigorous results.

and

No one has a right to their job.  Not the janitor, not the CEO, no one.  It would be like a rationalist having a right to their own opinion.  At some point you’ve got to fire the saddle-makers and close down the industry. 

and

No company has a right to its continued existence.  Change happens.

and

A high standard of living is the just reward of hard work and intelligence.  If other people or other places have lower standards of living, then the problem is the lower standard, not the higher one.  Raise others up, don’t lower yourself.  A high standard of living is a good thing, not a bad one – a universal moral generalization that includes you in particular.  If you’ve earned your wealth honestly, enjoy it without regrets.

and

People safeguard, nourish, and improve that which they know will not be taken away from them.  Tax a little if you must, but at some point you must let people own what they buy.

and

In countries that are lawful and just, the government is the referee, not a player.  If the referee runs onto the field and kicks the football, things are starting to get scary.

and

Making money is a virtuous endeavor, despite all the lies that have been told about it, and should properly be found in the company of other virtues.  Those who set out to make money should not think of themselves as fallen, but should rather conduct themselves with honor, pride, and self-respect, as part of the grand pageantry of human civilization rising up from the dirt, and continuing forward into the future.

Amen!