Reagan Architect Declares War on GOP--Article

Reagan architect declares war on GOP
Viguerie says withhold money, stop calling yourself 'Republican'

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© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com

Richard Viguerie

WASHINGTON - One of the architects of the Reagan Revolution is
calling on fellow conservatives to withhold support of the Republican
Party establishment - including most GOP incumbents in Congress this
year.

In "Conservatives Betrayed: How George W. Bush and Other Big Government
Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause," Richard Viguerie, the man
who invented the idea of using direct mail as a means of going over the
heads of what he considered to be a biased establishment press, says
it's time for radical action to save the Republican Party from itself.

His plan includes the following actions, which would spell bad news for
the GOP in the 2006 midterm congressional elections and in the 2008
presidential election:


Withhold financial support from Republican committees and most
Republican incumbents.

Withhold support from all 2008 presidential candidates.

No longer call yourself "a Republican" but rather a Reagan Republican
or a Reagan conservative.

And work for wholesale change in Republican leadership.
While not advocating GOP defeat, Viguerie says conservatives should not
fear the loss of Congress in 2006, since the biggest gains usually
follow a defeat. He points to 1976 when Gerald Ford's loss made
possible Ronald Reagan's victory in 1980 and to 1992 when George H.W.
Bush's loss made possible the Republican congressional victories in
1994.

Viguerie helped transform American politics by pioneering the use of
direct-mail fundraising in the political and ideological spheres.
Dubbed by some as the "Funding Father of the conservative movement,"
Viguerie motivated millions of Americans to participate in politics for
the first time.


In his new book, Viguerie shows federal spending under the Bush
administration has grown five times larger than that during the second
term of the Clinton administration, painting the president as a traitor
to his party.

Viguerie compares spending by the federal government, adjusted for
inflation, during the Clinton years vs. the Bush years. In Clinton's
first term, federal expenditures rose 4.7 percent. In his second term,
they rose 3.7 percent. In the first term of the Bush administration,
however, spending rose 19.2 percent.

"If ever there was a case for divided government, here it is," writes
Viguerie. "The lesson for many Americans is that today's Republicans
cannot be trusted with the keys to both the executive and legislative
branches of the federal government."

No matter how you slice it, Viguerie says, Bush makes Clinton look like
a spending piker by comparison. For instance, the Transactional Records
Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University in New York keeps records
that show how much the federal government spends on average each year
for each person in the country.

When this standard of measurement is used, the comparison between the
two administrations is even more pronounced.

Cumulative growth in federal expenditures, adjusted for inflation,
during the Clinton years actually shrunk by 1.1 percent. Yet, in the
Bush first term, it rose 15 percent.

"During President Bush's first five years in office, the federal
government increased by $616 billion," Viguerie writes. "That's a
mammoth 33 percent jump in the size of the federal government in just
his first five years! To put this in perspective, this increase of $616
billion is more than the entire federal budget in Jimmy Carter's last
years in office. And conservatives were complaining about Big
Government back then! How can Bush, (Dennis) Hastert, (Bill) Frist and
company look us in the eye and tell us they are fiscal conservatives
when in five short years they increased the already-bloated government
by more than the budget for the entire federal government when Ronald
Reagan was assuming office?"

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