Who is RICHARD VIGUERIE?
Richard Viguerie transformed American politics in the 1960s and ’70s by pioneering the use of direct mail fundraising in the political and ideological spheres. He used Information Technology to help build the conservative movement, making possible the election of Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan’s 1968 campaign manager Cliff White and journalist William Gill wrote in their book Why Reagan Won: “In every election from 1966 onward, the Viguerie Company and its score of imitators . . . brought information to millions of Americans, information that quite often the people could not obtain from newspapers or television or mass-circulation magazines.”
Viguerie motivated millions of Americans to participate in politics for the first time, greatly expanding the base of active citizenship. The late John F. Kennedy Jr.’s political magazine, George, described the founding of Viguerie’s organization as one of 100 “defining political moments of the 20th century.”
The AFL-CIO News once reported that Viguerie “made it all possible” for conservatives, and The Washington Post called him “the conservatives’ Voice of America.” In 1979 Time magazine named him one of 50 future leaders of America, and in 1981 People magazine named him one of the 25 most intriguing people of the year. In December 1999 he was cited in the Washington Times as one of 13 “Conservatives of the Century.” In 2008, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann called him “either one of the greats or one of the demons depending on your point of view of the conservative movement.”
Viguerie’s latest book is Conservatives Betrayed: How George W. Bush and Other Big Government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause (Bonus Books, 2006). Conservatives Betrayed is an incisive look at how the GOP rode the support of America’s conservatives to majority status, only to advance a liberal, Big Government agenda. Conservatives Betrayed is both a manifesto of what conservatism stands for in the 21st century and a battle plan for reclaiming and revitalizing the movement.
