The man created the site that brought down Dan Rather and exerts a significant influence on national politics. What more do you want?
Duke Cunningham got what he deserved. The others didn't.
DrDeb posted this interesting item of historical perspective on another thread, and I quote:
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The more things change, the more they stay the same . . . Viguerie "hectored" Reagan as well!!
IS CONSERVATISM FINISHED?
By Wilfred M. McClay
". . . We also forget that the Reagan administration itself, far from being happily unified, was driven by internal battles between “pragmatists” and “ideologues,” conflicts that prefigured many of the policy battles of the present. And we forget that, outside the administration, REAGAN GOT PLENTY OF GRIEF FROM HIS OWN RIGHT AS WELL."
The querulous RICHARD VIGUERIE, for example, an influential but notably unhappy camper in those halcyon days, BEGAN HECTORING THE REAGAN PRESIDENCY ALMOST FROM THE BEGINNING, complaining to the Associated Press in January 1981 that with his cabinet appointments Reagan had given conservatives “the back of his hand.” A July 1981 op-ed by Viguerie in the Washington Post, entitled “For Reagan and the New Right, the Honeymoon Is Over,” was thoughtfully timed less than four months after the President had nearly been killed by an assassin’s bullet.
By December 1987, Viguerie was declaring that Reagan had actually “changed sides” and was “now allied with his former adversaries, the liberals, the Democrats, and the Soviets.” A year later, in the final months of his presidency, when it was clear to all that Reagan had fundamentally changed the terms of debate in American politics, Viguerie announced that, thanks to his tenure in office, “the conservative movement is directionless.”
You can read the entire commentary here:
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/cm/main/viewArticle.aip?id=10812&page=all
29 posted on 03/01/2007 7:17:51 PM PST by DrDeb
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