Excerpt from The New Right: We’re Ready to Lead by Richard A. Viguerie (1980)

Our success is built on four elements-single issue groups, multi-issue conservative groups, coalition politics and direct mail. . . .

Single issue groups naturally emerge because the political parties run away from issues. Single issue groups are the result and not the reason for the decline of political parties.

If one of the two major political parties had concerned itself more with issues like right to life, high taxes, the growth of the federal government, he right to keep and bear arms, a strong national defense, prayer in the schools, strengthening the family, sex on TV and in the movies, there probably would not have been an explosion of conservative single issue groups....

The second key to our success is the multi-issue group which is part of the conservative movement and makes no bones about it. Such a group is conservative first, last and always. It takes strong positions on every important conservative vs. liberal issues.

The multi-issue conservative movement group also takes a broad overview of where we are going and the best way to get there. It usually does not have as many members or supporters as single issue groups because its ranks are made up of individuals who are solidly conservative across the board.

The National Right to Work Committee can find over a million people who strongly oppose compulsory unionism.

The National Rifle Association can find nearly two million people who ,pose federal gun registration.

Right to Life groups can find over a million people who oppose abortion. But a conservative group which is pro-Right to Work, pro-Right to Life and pro-gun simply can't find a million contributors who agree on 20 different conservative issues.

For example, a local union leader may dislike the National Right to Work Committee but also oppose additional gun controls.

But it is a sign of conservative strength that several of our broad spectrum groups do have, if not a million members, several hundred thousand. Multi-issue broad spectrum groups such as The Conservative Caucus, the American Conservative Union, the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, the Heritage Foundation and the National Conservative Political Action Committee, to name but a few, are trying and succeeding in covering all the bases and all the issues for the conservative movement....

Which brings me to the third part of the New Right's success-coalition politics.

Coalition politics is as old as the United States of America. Coalition politics includes working within the Republican and Demo- cratic parties to nominate conservative candidates, promote conservative positions and create conservative majorities in both parties....

I want to talk now about the fourth reason for the New Right's success--direct mail.

Like all successful political movements, we must have a method of communicating with each other, and for conservatives in the 1970's it was direct mail.

Frankly, the conservative movement is where it is today because of direct mail. Without direct mail, there would be no effective counterforce to liberalism, and certainly there would be no New Right....

We sell our magazines, our books, and our candidates through the mail. We fight our legislative battles through the mail. We alert our supporters to upcoming battles through the mail. We find new recruits for the conservative movement through the mail. Without the mail, most conservative activity would wither and die

… there is one method of mass commercial communication that the liberals do not control-direct mail. In fact, conservatives excel at direct mail.... Raising money is only one of several purposes of direct-mail advertising letters. A letter may ask you to vote for a candidate, volunteer for campaign and also ask you for money to pay for the direct mail advertising campaign....

There is another key to New Right success-our positive attitude toward the news media. From the time I started in politics in the mid 1950's until the early 1970's, most conservatives and the national media were like cats and dogs, or oil and water-they just didn't mix. Then in the early 1970's some of the national media began to notice our political activities.

We're not close to our goal of governing America-but we want to. .. .

[After initially rejecting the idea of responding to a reporter who contacted me] I called the reporter back and said, "Why don't you come over and, if you've got time, why don't we go to lunch?"

Well, I spent an enjoyable three hours with the reporter. He wrote a basically fair and accurate story (although it wasn't as fair and objective as my mother would have written.)

And from that day forward, I felt that I and other conservatives had to change our view of the press.

I can think of no better example of the difference between the New Right and the old right.

We realize that reporters and editors are not monsters, or even hopeless ideologues.

The vast majority are good, decent men and women who are trying to do a professional job and are looking for the kind of news which will put their stories on the front page or the nightly TV newscasts.

During the next few years, the New Right's relationship with the press improved. We felt comfortable with the press and they began to cover our activities. However, in the spring of 1977 1 realized that my associates in the New Right and I needed a more professional approach to the media.

We were dealing with the media in a casual, almost accidental way. We needed someone to introduce us to the major media, to teach us how to call and conduct a press conference, how to have a press breakfast, how to get our thoughts across in a few seconds on TV, how to hold activities that the press would be interested in covering....

Single issue groups-multi-issue groups-coalition politics-direct mail-these have been the four cornerstones of conservative growth and success in the 1970's. They will help us build a new majority in America in the 1980's.

As Congressman Newt Gingrich of Georgia has put it: "The way you build a majority in this country is you go out and put together everybody who's against the guy who's in. And instead of asking the question, What divides us?, you ask the question, What unites us?"

And what unites most conservatives, Republican, Democratic and Independent, is a desire for less government and more freedom for every American.