PRESS RELEASE from Richard A. Viguerie/ConservativesBetrayed.com

For Release November 8, 2006

Richard Viguerie says:
MESSAGE TO REPUBLICAN CONGRESSIONAL LEADERS: YOU'RE FIRED!
Entire Republican leadership in Congress should be replaced
Election was referendum on Bush, GOP leaders, and 'neoconservatives'

 
WASHINGTON, D.C., November 8, 2006 --“Every single member of the Republican leadership in the House should be replaced,” Richard A. Viguerie said today.  “They have failed the conservatives who put them in office, and they have failed the people of this country.”
 
Yesterday’s mid-term elections were a referendum on George W. Bush and his war on Iraq.  Voters couldn’t vote to fire Bush, so they did the next best thing – they fired his party, in the House, in the Senate, in the statehouses around the Nation.
 
Conservatives and value voters had long since felt betrayed by President Bush and the Republican Congress, which greatly reduced their enthusiasm for supporting those who had abandoned them.
 
Viguerie said it’s not enough for GOP leaders to be relegated to minority status.  “They should get out of the way, and let a new generation of young, principled conservatives take their place.”  New, conservative Republican leaders would be able to “reach out to some moderate and conservative Democrats who were elected yesterday and make real reforms in areas such as earmarking.”  Likewise, open positions in the Senate GOP leadership should be filled with conservatives, Viguerie said.
 
“Congressional Republicans should move as fast as they can to distance themselves from the Bush White House and the Big Business wing of the Republican Party.  That’s the only way to come back from this disaster.”
 
“This election,” Viguerie said, “was also a referendum on the so-called ‘neoconservatives’ – the Big Government Republicans who took us into a nation-building war while they busted the budget and enriched Big Business and its K Street lobbyists.”
 
Viguerie said, “The only thing Denny Hastert & Company cared about was holding onto power.  That’s what led them to become Kings of Pork.  That’s what led them to protect the likes of Mark Foley.”
 
MAJORITIES FAVOR SMALLER GOVERNMENT, TRADITIONAL VALUES: “One thing this election was NOT is a repudiation of conservatism.  The twin pillars of conservatism – smaller government and traditional values – have the support of the same voters who threw out the Republican Congress.”
 
Viguerie noted that, in a CNN poll released October 27, 2006, 54 percent of respondents said they thought the government was trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses. Only 37 percent said they thought the government should do more to solve the country's problems.  Meanwhile, 51 percent said they thought that promoting traditional values was an appropriate activity for government, while 43 percent said the government should not favor any particular set of values.
 
Congressional Republicans should quickly disassociate themselves from the failed big government policies of President Bush and set a conservative course.  The White House has failed them, initiating policies that the voters have now soundly repudiated.  Congressional Republicans should always remember who elected them – the conservative and independent voters back home, not the elitist (and lame duck) power brokers in the White House, on K Street, and at the Republican National Committee.
 
At the same time, grassroots conservatives must no longer act as an appendage of the Republican Party. We should concentrate instead on becoming a Third Force in American politics that forces both parties to the Right and sets the nation’s agenda.  In that regard, we should reach out to the new Democrats of 2006 and see whether they are indeed prepared to vote differently from San Francisco Democrats.
 
Today starts the new war for the heart and soul of the Republican Party.
 

Richard A. Viguerie, Chairman of both ConservativeHQ.com and American Target Advertising, Inc., pioneered ideological and political direct mail and has been called "the funding father of the conservative movement" for his role in helping build dozens of conservative organizations.  He is the author of 5 books including the newly released Conservatives Betrayed: How George W. Bush and Other Big Government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause (Bonus Books, 2006).
 


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