November/December 1995 Issue

A Guide to the Religious Right

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Paul Weyrich, the New Right’s strategic architect, founded the powerful Christian Coalition. He now runs the Free Congress Foundation. Richard Viguerie has raised millions for New Right causes and candidates with the most lucrative direct-mail operations this side of L.L. Bean. “Direct mail,” Viguerie says, “is like having a water moccaasin for a watchdog. Silent but deadly.”
Howard Phillips, with Weyrich and Viguerie, forms the New Right’s trinity. He founded the Conservative Caucus, helped start the Moral Majority, and now heads the U.S. Taxpayers Party, which hopes to draft Buchanan for president. Presidential Candidate Pat Buchanan‘s announcement of a “cultural war” ignited the religious right at the 1992 GOP convention. “Just wait until 1996,” he promised this year. “Then you’ll see a real right-wing tyrant.”

Illustrations By Mark Zingarelli

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It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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