Richard A. Viguerie’s 2006 book Conservatives Betrayed: How George W. Bush and Other Big Government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause (Bonus Books) offers a roadmap for a conservative comeback following the disastrous elections of 2006 and 2008.

     The book calls on conservatives to organize themselves as a “Third Force” that can influence both major political parties. 

     Viguerie points to environmentalist, labor union, and race-based groups as models for “Third Force”-type organizations.  These groups are major political players, he says, but they are independent.  They have their own members, money, and issues.  “They are free to punish or reward politicians based on their behavior.”

     Conservatives, according to Viguerie, will respond to the 2008 election by creating their own Third Force organizations.  These groups will deal with social issues, the culture, immigration, taxes, health care, government spending, judicial appointments, the environment, excessive government regulation, schools, and the concerns of working class and small business class Americans – “literally thousands of grassroots organizations reaching every community in this country.”

     Conservatives Betrayed was one of the earliest assaults on Big Government Republicanism, the governing philosophy that wrecked the economy, ruined the GOP “brand,” and brought the Obama-Pelosi-Reid Democrats to power. 

     Since the book was published, its central argument – that Big Government Republicanism would be a disaster for the GOP and for the country – has been proven correct.

     In the book, Viguerie calls on conservatives to “Cut off your support of the Republican National Committee and other party fundraising committees;” to instead “Give 100% of your political donations to principled conservative causes and candidates;” and to “Demand sweeping changes in the Republican congressional leadership.” 

     In recent weeks, Viguerie has renewed his call for conservatives to cut off support for the GOP until the party changes its leadership, top to bottom.

Conservative leaders know that the revival of the conservative movement will be generated through the energy and passion of the grassroots.  Here’s a look at some of the unprecedented number of comments we’ve received at ConservativeHQ.com in response to Richard Viguerie’s election-related news releases and blog entries.  Take a look and leave a comment of your own.

-    You finally got it right.

-    I hope he’s right and that a major demographic shift in the voters hasn’t occurred instead. I’m very concerned illegal immigrants played a significant role in electing Obama

-    I couldn’t agree more!

-    Gee, I couldn’t agree more! We’ve been saying that for four years. G’luck!

-    How can you say this is just a defeat for big spending Republicans? Obama will destroy this country. Courts, military, everything will be destroyed. Not to mention the destruction to the quality of health care. Who knows, I will probably end up losing the lousy job that I hate. McCain was 10 times a better choice than that Muslim thug.

-    I do not claim to be a politician, nor do I possess the credentials of a political scientist. I feel betrayed by the Republican Party in many ways. Firstly, their failure to implement conservative ideas and fostering and fomenting big government. What, then, is the distinction between the parties? Secondly, the viciousness and lack of quarter in this race totally frustrated me. Seeing John McCain trying to play the gentlemen reminded of 1996 and Bob Dole. The running against the Democrat Party is a good example of the expression, “bringing a knife to a gunfight.” We are back to where we were in 1992. Yes, two years later, things were so bad with Clinton, there was fear of some form of revolutionary takeover by the militia! What brought about the change in 1994 and got the rotten Democrats out of 40 years of power in congress were the efforts of Rush Limbaugh and the unity created in those congressional races by Newt Gingrich. That was why they had to get rid of Gingrich. Just remember, Clinton did manage to get re-elected! Do not think the Democrats have forgotten – they now have to get rid of talk radio, starting with Rush, and that will be the purpose of the Fairness Doctrine, which will probably be signed after the Freedom of Choice Act. Think of how many babies will be aborted with Obama running things! Regrettable that his mother did not exercise her choice with regard to him!

Seeing what I have seen, what with ACORN, the amount of questionable money Obama raised from whatever sources, and Obama’s constant lies, I feel it is time to either work to destroy the Democrat Party, or just found a new party. The Republican Party simply does not know how to lead or fight. This is not a gentlemen’s combat, it is brass knuckles all the way! Frankly, it appears as if they were all neutered at some point! They are sadly lacking in the genital department, and if there is one area where the Democrats have no deficit, it is surely not in this department. They do what they want and worry about it later, just as in this election!
You are quite correct. Obama has nothing for me… starting with abortion, then moving to religion, then going to guns, and then to taxes. Nothing whatsoever!

-    I too feel until we as Republicans return to our conservative values, we are doomed to repeat history. I liked Sarah Palin. She was a breath of fresh air and I for one do not believe McCain would have gotten the votes he had without her. I look at our own Colorado races and we lost a senate race to an extreme Liberal who ran a better campaign. John McCain refused to go after Obama on many issues and then he voted for the bailout so that AIG executives could get back rubs and have their toenails painted. When Americans are watching their jobs go overseas and health care costs soaring, they get angry. We need to get back to self-reliance. We need to follow our constitution, which Obama has stated he would like to get rid of as he said it does not help America. It has kept us strong for over 200 years. I guess that’s not good enough. He wants to make us a third world nation. We need to stop rewarding mediocrity and reward excellence.

-    Obama is going to be president for 8 years. We need to start working for 2016.

-    Glad I did not vote. McCain and Obama are both criminals, and their Parties, Republican and Democrat, are co-conspirators. You’re all farcical fools to ignore the Highest Crimes by both criminals against America’s Soul, The US Constitution. Their cronies are a hatching swarm in congress too.

-    This guy is usually right. We have been disgusted with some of W’s actions. He is not a conservative. He has kept us safe since 9/11 but he allowed over-spending. He has socialistic leanings. His dad probably made suggestions for his awful appointments and his mom is a busy-body. No one in that family really likes her. She runs everyone. Maybe she was at the bottom of the appointments like first Secretary of the Treasury who cried, wrote a book about mistreatment by W and is still crying.

I am tempted to get the book.

Republicans – Conservatives – have no organization and no planning. They have figureheads like when Bob Dole said it was his turn to run for president and then lost big. The GOP chairmen have been ineffective blobs since Hayley Barbour left to become Governor of Mississippi. House leader Hastert feathered his own nest with legislation that built freeways near his property and then he lost his next election – good thing. He did nothing in office. They are all thinking about their retirement, what they can get out of it.
The Media and Huckabee chose our candidate. The Media put Obama in office.

-    You would do better to stop sending foolish e-mails out to Republicans, and help us get another Reagan Revolution started.

-    The constant message of no taxes, freebies – welfare, health, paychecks for not working – is the message that Democrats sold. Democrats had the media in their back pocket, and the Bush America Haters message of “do not trust Republicans” got all the black, Mexican, and college kid vote. American business will be nationalized, energy rationed, unemployment will be extremely high, and the economy goes in the tank. Who will want to risk funding a business with leaders who know nothing about how to run a business? Oil companies will leave the USA for Canada. America will become a third world country in four years.

-    Already voted McCain/Palin 2 months ago by absentee. This whole election season was nothing but illegal scams, yet no one is doing anything about it but letting Obama, the phony, have his way. This country is going down the tubes. This is the second time or third time in a row in which the active duty military have not gotten a chance to have their votes counted. The votes that should be counted the most. People who put their lives on the line for our country, and in transitive property their families also, are slapped in the face one more time and told their opinions/votes do not matter. This country would not be where it is today without the military. Now we have elected a phony know-nothing because of his color and not his skill. I am sure we could have picked a better black person other than who we ended up with. A phony ladies’ man with just as phony of a spouse.

-    It is finished. The hippies, young and old, and the “people of color” have completed their mission. The United States of America is dead. From this day forward, I shall refer to his place as Duhmerica. My flag flies no more. I shall avoid all things media, retreat into my daily duties and hobbies and, occasionally, sadly remember when we were a great nation. “Reverend’ Wright was prophetic, in a perverse way: God has damned America.

-    How can we ignore the most effective enemy conservatives now face: the media? If voters knew the truth about Obama and many other Democratic candidates, I think today’s story would be different. I think if the Democrats had to nominate a candidate based on a full vetting by the media, they would have chosen differently. What would be the most effective weapon against the media if you were willing to go all out and take this matter seriously? Would it be a boycott by the conservative public, or better yet by the capitalist business world? Imagine the immediate defeat of those leftist institutions when the business world retraced their ad contracts. They fail and then are ready to be acquired by a new “fair” pro-American, pro-capitalist ownership. A total shakeup would occur. It’s not to say it won’t head that way again, but a line will have been drawn that says you don’t exist in this country without first supporting the principles of the Constitution and capitalism. The seriousness of this election mistake won’t be known for several months but it’s time to formulate a plan to turn things around. A plan that puts the fight back on even ground.

-    The best way to annoy the media is to cancel cable television. I don’t mean turn it off. I mean STOP feeding the beast. How long are we going to allow the media to select our presidents? They need to be OUT OF A JOB. I cancelled my cable television after the primaries.

-    Newt sold us out, get a clue. Conservatives are repudiating the GOP in this election.

-    I used to think I was a conservative until realized that guys like Buckley and Rusher were as bad as their “liberal” counterparts. I have come to realize that there are has not been a qualified US president in my lifetime from FDR to, and including, G. W. Bush. I think Barry Goldwater was qualified, but the “Republican” Party rejected him just as they rejected Ron Paul this time. They cared about the Constitution, but the others have betrayed the American Revolution and our Founding Fathers, leaving us with the thoroughly disgusting prospect of either a racist black Democrat or a wannabe-RINO who would never have made it to the Naval Academy or through Navy flight school and escaped responsibility for a disastrous shipboard fire that took 134 lives and did millions of dollars of damage without his daddy’s and granddaddy’s influence. The only explanation I have is that we are in the clutches of a secret combination of international proportions, and our votes aren’t worth the paper they weren’t printed on.

-    Well stated. Maybe it’s time to embrace the original Libertarian principles of our Republic, chief of which was very limited government.

-    This election was stolen by thugs in many cities; if the Rule of Law cannot be in place, our democracy is lost. California Republicanism is a picture of what you are describing: cold-hearted bankers and unfeeling pro-choice women who like a more luxurious lifestyle. Only Christianity can keep the “civilized” in civilization, and prevent greet and avarice from taking over our capitalistic system. As Russia experienced: if the poor are ignored and without education – as has been the case in our Black communities – society will be in jeopardy from their anger and frustration. May the Lord Jesus Christ help us reach out to the poor, and perhaps each one “adopt” a needy family that they know (we are helping one such family), then we will be living the Gospel of Christ and be able to give them the salvation message.

-    Republicans who stand for everything stand for nothing. It is time to restore Republican first principles. Restoration Republicans stand for Liberty (Freedom with Personal Responsibility).

-    And Obama’s socialist, communistic, Marxist hi-jacking of our government with intentions of destroying our nation is BETTER??

-    Why when the polls say that 85% of Americans believe that America has been going in the wrong direction the assumption is that it needs to go further to the left? Are the Republicans brain-dead?

-    You got THAT right! We did this to ourselves (RINO’s should be very proud of themselves!!) But I can’t help but thinking they had some significant help from… Satan. Do you know that there is not a SINGLE Republican House… from all of New England!!! God bless America! God knows we need it more than ever, since it seems we have abandoned Him!

-    The corrupt media is to blame for this great loss.

     “Republican congressional leaders have failed their party, they have failed the conservatives who make up their party’s base, and they have failed the American people.  They should resign immediately,” Richard A. Viguerie, Chairman of ConservativeHQ.com, said.

     “The political party that conservatives have supported with their volunteer work, money, and votes has not supported conservatives.  That has to change.  The congressional leadership must be replaced with principled conservatives.

     “If the congressional leaders refuse to resign, grassroots conservatives should cut off their support – their financial support, and their volunteer support,” Viguerie said.  “Conservatives should channel their support to principled conservative candidates and to organizations that will promote a conservative agenda.

     “Not one cent, and not one minute of volunteer work, should go to the Republican Party until the congressional leadership is replaced with principled conservatives.  These leaders still don’t understand why the voters have rejected them, and they won’t ‘get it’ until conservatives hit them where it hurts.”

     Three years ago, in his book Conservatives Betrayed: How George W. Bush and Other Big Government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause, Viguerie warned of the consequences for 2006 and 2008 unless Republican leaders were replaced.

     Said Viguerie: “In this election, the people did not reject conservatism.  They rejected failed, incompetent Big Government Republican leaders.  It’s time for conservatives to do the same.”

     In the 2008 elections, “Voters did not reject conservatism,” Richard A. Viguerie, the Chairman of ConservativeHQ.com, said.  “They rejected Big Government Republicanism in all its forms, including the Bush administration and the Republican leadership in Congress.”

     The McCain campaign, Viguerie said, “represented many things Americans do not like about politics.  Senator McCain spent more than a quarter-century in Washington as a ‘moderate’ and ‘insider,’ and his campaign was run by longtime Washington insiders and lobbyists for Big Government.”

     “This disastrous defeat can and will be laid at the feet of the Big Government corporate Republicans, who abandoned the Reagan Coalition, massively expanded government, and ignored the needs and values of regular, grassroots Americans.  They protected Wall Street and K Street and forgot about Main Street.”

     Said Viguerie: “Republicans will make a comeback only after they return to their conservative roots.  That process starts with the replacement, with principled conservatives, of all of the Republicans’ elected Congressional leaders, as well as most members of the Republican National Committee and most state party officials.  It’s time for new leaders, from top to bottom.”

     “The battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party,” Viguerie said, “begins now.”

IF OBAMA BECOMES PRESIDENT…

What’s on his ‘To Do’ list? With the help of Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid, what would President Obama do?

1.  
2. 1.  Making America a socialist country.
3.  
4. 2.  Enacting a major distribution of wealth – in other words, taking from some Americans and giving it to others (including people here illegally).
5.  
6. 3.  Increasing the capital gains tax, which will reduce investments and new jobs.
7.  
8. 4.  Increasing the estate (death) tax, leaving more to the government and less for your children and grandchildren.
9.  
10. 5.  “Allowing” the Bush tax cuts to expire, thereby increasing taxes on most Americans.
11.  
12. 6.  Removing the cap on Social Security payroll taxes.
13.  
14. 7.  Increasing taxes on seniors who continue to work after retirement age.
15.  
16. 8.  Enacting huge taxes to fight “global warming,” such as higher taxes on gasoline.
17.  
18. 9.  Merging the tax and welfare systems, disguising welfare checks as “tax cuts.”
19.  
20. 10.  Creating more “welfare” programs for corporations using taxpayer money.
21.  
22. 11.  Instituting more taxpayer bailouts for Wall Street and other big corporations.
23.  
24. 12.  Imposing rules that require nearly all workers to join unions, even against their wishes.
25.  
26. 13.  Instituting a new “Fairness Doctrine” that would cause broadcast stations to eliminate radio talk shows (no more Rush Limbaugh, Jim Dobson, Laura Ingraham, etc.).
27.  
28. 14.  Issuing government mandates that increase the cost of health insurance, and making patients wait longer to see their doctors, dentists, and other health care providers.
29.  
30. 15.  Rationing health care for all, especially seniors.
31.  
32. 16.  Rationing health care for premature infants.
33.  
34. 17.  Rationing health care for people with rare diseases.
35.  
36. 18.  Rationing health care for people when doctors guess that they are terminally ill.
37.  
38. 19.  Rationing health care that uses new or expensive medicine or medical technology.
39.  
40. 20.  Having the government determining who will be your doctor.
41.  
42. 21  Having the government deciding which hospital you will use.
43.  
44. 22.  Having the government deciding what medicines you can take.
45.  
46. 23.  Increasing welfare payments for illegal aliens.
47.  
48. 24.  Increasing taxpayers’ health care spending on illegal aliens.
49.  
50. 25.  Eliminating rules that prevent vote fraud, such as requiring voter identification, and providing voting rights for felons.
51.  
52. 26.  Imposing government control over political content on the Internet.
53.  
54. 27.  Passing “hate crime” laws that would put ministers and others in jail for criticizing homosexual behavior.
55.  
56. 28.  Requiring taxpayers to pay for all abortions and providing additional federal support to organizations that perform abortions.
57.  
58. 29.  Allowing all abortions, including partial-birth abortions.
    
    30.  Removing all state restrictions on abortion, including late-term abortions and requirements that health care be given to infants who survive abortions.
59.  
60. 31.  Voiding state laws on parental consent and informed consent.
61.  
62. 32.  Appointing judges who make decisions based on their political beliefs, instead of the Constitution and statutory law.
63.  
64. 33.  Ending restrictions on plaintiff lawyers who file frivolous lawsuits.
     
65. 34. Signing and ratifying treaties that transfer U.S. sovereignty to the United Nations and other international organizations.

  35. Making the District of Columbia the 51st state (with two Senators and a House member in Congress).