A Prince and a Great Man Has Fallen

Paul Weyrich was the linchpin of the conservative movement.   Along with William F. Buckley Jr., Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan, he was one of the persons most responsible for the movement’s successes.

Over decades, he was a founder or co-founder of virtually every major conservative organization.  Single-issue groups, PACs, foundations, lobbying groups – you name it, and, chances are, he had a hand in it. 

He co-founded the Heritage Foundation, the movement’s first think tank, and served as its first president.  He created and chaired the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, which prevented a complete leftwing takeover of the federal government in the 1970s.

He founded the American Legislative Exchange Council, bringing together conservative state legislators from across the country, turning states into laboratories for conservative ideas and nurturing the careers of future governors and members of Congress. 

Through the Free Congress Foundation and other organizations, he trained thousands of conservative activists.  He worked with Jerry Falwell to create the Moral Majority, and helped bring tens of millions of religious conservatives into politics for the first time and made the GOP, for a time, the nation’s majority party.

In the 1990s, he laid the groundwork for conservative broadcasting with National Empowerment Television and America’s Voice, and he trained activists who played a critical role promoting democracy in the former Soviet Empire.

For decades, it has been at Paul’s Washington offices that social conservatives and their allies gather weekly to discuss politics and policy.

Bill Buckley, who died earlier this year, was the conservative movement’s intellectual father and the dean of the first generation of conservative activists – those who kept the movement alive in the 1950s and who created the Goldwater for President effort.

Paul was the organizer and strategic genius whose energy and determination turned the ideas of Buckley and his crew into practical political reality.

Paul was the dean of conservatives’ second generation of activists – those who worked in ‘Youth for Goldwater,’ who built conservative organizations in the 1970s, and who laid the groundwork for Reagan’s election in 1980, for the Reagan presidency, and for the Gingrich Revolution in 1994. 

As I look back on the life and career of my friend, two more things spring to mind that made Paul’s involvement essential in the movement’s successes.

One was the “intel” he provided conservatives.  A Capitol Hill veteran, he foresaw what the Left was doing long before anyone else, sometimes before the Left knew.  He was like a great athlete who can seemingly read the opponent’s mind.  Often, he talked us into fighting, and winning, battles we would not have fought.

And, back in the 1980s, a number of conservative leaders, including up-and-coming leaders like Newt Gingrich, would gather each Wednesday at the Viguerie family home in McLean to work on conservative strategy.

Based on his keen observations of the Left, Paul taught us how to reverse-engineer them – to do what they were doing with PACs, foundations, etc., and to do it better.

In the next few years, as conservatives wander through the wilderness that is the Obama Era, we will come to miss him more and more.  Just as Paul could always count on the love and support of his wife Joyce, conservatives from sea to shining sea could always count on Paul.

Paul Weyrich was like George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life.”  Without him, everything would have been different; everything would have been worse.  He was the indispensable man, the sine qua non of conservative successes in the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s. 

To paraphrase 2nd Samuel: Know ye not that there is a prince and a great man fallen this day?

Richard A. Viguerie is president of ConservativeHQ.com.