Reagan conservative lashes at Bush-Delay as 'hijackers of the conservative movement'
John Byrne
Published: Friday July 28, 2006
He didn’t support invading Iraq. He says national security decisions are too often made for political gain. And he maintains that Tom DeLay used “legal plunder” for the “immoral purpose of holding onto power.”
A Democrat? No – His name is Richard Viguerie, a conservative icon and key architect of Ronald Reagan’s 1980 victory. Known to many as the godfather of direct-mail campaign fundraising, his four-decade career has succored scores of conservative candidates and grassroots causes.
A balding grandfather with a wry Texan’s smile, Viguerie is a seasoned conservative who confidently brushes aside accusations that his criticism of Republicans is intended for personal gain. On Monday, he sat down with RAW STORY to talk about his new book, Conservatives Betrayed: How George W. Bush and Other Big Government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause.
Modeling himself after Barry Goldwater, a 1960s conservative iconoclast whose reactionary stances later positioned Ronald Reagan for victory in 1980, Viguerie says the worst day of his political life was when Lyndon Johnson defeated Goldwater for president in 1964. Viguerie, who aided Reagan’s election but later became critical of some of his policies, today sees a landscape where Republicans run using a mantle of traditional values but carry the banner of conservatism only as far as it takes them to get elected.
Viguerie begins his book with two quotes. “The first is from Ronald Reagan and it says something along the lines of: ‘I tell my people that when we begin to refer to the federal government as us, we’ve been here too long.’ And then I recount a story of [former House Majority Leader] Tom DeLay (R-TX), late one night after dinner, he wants to light up a cigar and the manager says I’m sorry, Mr. DeLay… it’s against the law to smoke in a federal building. And DeLay says, ‘I am the federal government.’”
Viguerie spares little in attacking DeLay.
“DeLay is singlehandedly the primary person responsible for the most expansion of the government since [Democratic President] Lyndon Johnson,” he remarks. Subsequent research by RAW STORY revealed that, according to the CATO Institute, President Bush has exceeded Johnson in terms of discretionary spending.
Citing the recent bribery conviction of Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-CA), Viguerie says the real threat to government isn’t illegal activity – which he believes will eventually be caught by the law – but legal “plunder.”
“What really affects our life is the legal stuff, the legal thefts, the legal plunder of people like Tom DeLay, for the sole, in my opinion immoral, purpose of holding onto power,” the Texas politico said. “They are engaged in this illegal theft, spending money that doesn’t belong to them to hold onto power. And that’s corrupt and immoral. And people who are engaged in that are in no way worthy of the label conservative.”
Viguerie says he blames DeLay for passing President Bush’s Medicare prescription drug benefit, which conservatives say adds $18 trillion to Medicare’s unfunded liabilities. He also breaks with Bush on Iraq, noting that Bush used his opposition to “nation building” as a means to win conservative support during the 2000 campaign.
“I opposed the Iraq war,” he says. “It’s just nation building, and it’s just, you know, conservatives, true conservatives oppose America going in there, and now that we’re in there I don’t know how to get out.”
Asked where conservatives draw the line between restraining spending and defense, Viguerie framed his response by saying conservatives place defense spending above all other government projects. The United States spends more than six times as much on its military as the next largest spender, I noted, but this didn’t faze the Texas Republican.
“The purpose of government is not to redistribute the wealth, not to promote diversity, not to promote this cause or that cause -- it’s national defense,” he says. “That’s the purpose of government.”
“People are free wherever they’re free not because of their defense budget, but because of America’s defense budget,” he adds.
He does, however, believe military spending is rife with abuse. “The decisions are made far too many times for political reasons and not for defense reasons. Homeland Security is just riddled with pork.”
Viguerie was among the block of conservatives who perceived Bush’s statement in support of the federal marriage amendment -- which would define marriage as being between one man and one woman – as tepid. He believes if Bush stood fast to conservative principles his approval rating would climb out of the mid-thirties.
“The president is in his 30s not because he’s governing as a conservative, but because he’s not governing as a conservative,” Viguerie avers. “He needs to pick ideological fights with the Democrats: judges, spending priorities, taxes...He needs to make some appointments and have the Democrats filibuster them. He needs to be a partisan conservative president. If he does that he’s going to see his numbers go way back up.”
Citing his recent criticism of conservative leaders in the Washington Post, I asked who he’d prefer to see running the Senate. Viguerie named Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), a reactionary Republican from the Gingrich class of 1994, who’s made his name opposing gay rights and positioning himself as a bedrock conservative. For example, Coburn held up a 2007 spending bill over an 8 percent increase in Senate spending.
“Almost the entire leadership in my opinion should be changed,” Viguerie says. “They’re all complicit in the problem. I think conservatives are in the similar position as the biblical Jews who had to wander in the desert for 40 years until the corrupt leaders had passed away. Then they can go to the promised land.” |
