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> The Conservative Caucus, ostensibly nonpartisan, concentrates on national issues and local organization rather than elections. It claims 300,000 dues-paying members ($5 to $15), maintains coordinators in 40 states and committees in 250 congressional districts. The caucus produces a raft of literature on the voting records of individual legislators and "fact sheets" on controversial questions. The summaries give both sides of the issue, but leave no doubt where virtue lies. An item on federal assistance to New York City is accompanied by a cartoon portraying the city as a prostitute. A piece on abortion in military hospitals shows a baby being put into a trash can with a bayonet. The caucus helped lead the fight against the Panama Canal treaties, and is now organizing opposition to SALT II with a Viguerie direct-mail campaign and a series of seminars around the country.
The caucus' mainspring is Phillips, once a conventional Republican who chaired the party in Boston and then served in the Nixon Administration as head of the Office of Economic Opportunity. That experience soured him on traditional bureaucracy.
Disillusioned with both Nixon and Ford, Phillips is now an enrolled Democrat. Says he: "To the extent that there is an opposition to the failed liberalism of our generation, that opposition comes from the New Right rather than the Republican Party." Losing on any single issue matters little, Phillips preaches, since each conflict generates opposition to the status quo and support for the New Right. He cites the example of an airline pilot who worked for the caucus two years ago on the Panama question and was drawn into politics. The pilot, Republican Gordon Humphrey, is now the junior U.S. Senator from New Hampshire.
> Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress emphasizes campaign organization and funding. Last year it donated $400,000 in cash and services to right-wing congressional candidates and it maintains ten field coordinators who work in primaries and general elections.
Survival's chief is Weyrich, a former Republican Senate staff aide who is considered the best strategist of the new generation. A Greek Catholic, Weyrich began the effort to involve prominent Evangelical Fundamentalists in rightwing politics. He also took the lead in defining "family issues"—including abortion and gay rights—as a rallying point for voters who are not necessarily conservative on other questions. With the cooperation of Phillips' Caucus, that effort led to the creation last month of still another group, Moral Majority. One of its founders is Jerry Falwell of Lynchburg, Va., whose Old-Time Gospel Hour makes him one of the most prominent electronic preachers in the U.S. Falwell envisions a mass organization including Baptists, Catholics, Mormons and Orthodox Jews.
His goal: "To defend the free enterprise system, the family, Bible morality, fundamental values." — National Conservative Political Action Committee (N.C.P.A.C.) also collects funds nationwide to target in specific campaigns, but it emphasizes publicity rather than precinct organization.