Gerald Ford

Retired Supreme Court Associate Justice John Paul Stevens, a liberal appointed by establishment Republican President Gerald R. Ford, yesterday penned an op-ed in the New York Times calling for the repeal of the Second Amendment and the idea is embraced by the same progressives that just a few years ago wanted to change the First Amendment to limit free speech.

By Richard Viguerie, CHQ Chairman
No matter how bad things looked on Capitol Hill during the 1970s, hope and encouragement came from Phyllis Schlafly and her legions of women who defeated the ERA state-by-state and in so doing showed conservatives what effective political organizing and bare-knuckle politics could accomplish when it was separated from the drag of the Republican establishment.

For many movement conservatives the leading conservative candidate for Vice President in 1980 was Senator Bill Armstrong. However, feeling the need to unite the GOP, Ronald Reagan ultimately chose George H.W. Bush as his running mate, and the rest – including the failed presidencies of George H.W Bush and George W. Bush – is history.

Republican primary voters tend toward primogeniture and they may make a cause out of a closely fought loss, as Nixon’s supporters did over his 1960 loss to John F. Kennedy and Reagan’s conservative supporters did in 1976 after he was denied the Republican nomination, but it appears that general election voters have a higher standard and they will never forgive or look at a sore loser as worthy of the highest office in the land.

By Richard A. Viguerie, CHQ Chairman
George H.W. Bush, ran as a pro-choice moderate in the 1980 Republican primaries – he wanted nothing to do with the social and economic conservative positions Reagan espoused. Almost by default Bush became Reagan’s runningmate, but he never adopted Reagan’s limited government goals and throughout the Reagan presidency he was never trusted by conservatives.

House GOP leaders' push to use trick votes to weaken OCare makes them look like the Gerald-Ford-estab.-R's that Reagan talked about in '76 as having made of the party a “fraternal order” when it must be “something where people are bound together by a shared philosophy.”