The New Right Takes Aim

And Democratic targets fear the bombardment

Block the SALT treaty? "We'll fight it to the end," says Howard Phillips, 38, a husky Bostonian who heads one of the ultraconservative groups that are raising millions to oppose ratification. "In the long run we lose only if we fail to fight."

Unite Protestant fundamentalists and Catholic ethnics into a political bloc by emphasizing emotional "family" issues? "A year or two ago nothing was happening," says Paul Weyrich, 36, a former TV reporter who leads another right-wing organization. "Now we're moving."

Chop down some of the Senate's most prominent Democrats? "Of course, we can do it," says Terry Dolan, 28, chairman of a third ultraconservative organization.

"We are out to destroy the popularity ratings of several liberal Senators, and it's working. Frank Church is screaming like a stuck pig, and I don't blame him."

Brash young leaders with small offices and big dreams--these are the centurions of the movement that claims the title of America's New Right. Its general goals, a drastic reduction in domestic government activity and a hard anti-Communist line abroad, are familiar enough. So is its rhetoric. But the New Right has developed some fresh, effective tactics. It scored a few surprising electoral upsets last year, and now it smells blood.

Kentucky Senator Wendell Ford, lead of the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee, warns that his party's control of the upper house is under serious threat for the first time in a quarter-century. Party Tactician Terry O'Connell, observing that House Democrats are also worried, says: "Everyone I know is scared to death of this thing." Senior Correspondent Laurence I. Barrett explored the reasons for this anxiety. His report:

Conservatives who succeeded in nominating Senator Barry Goldwater for President 15 years ago sought power through control of the Republican Party. In the mid-'70s, there was a feeble effort to unite diverse factions into a national conservative party. Today's New Right has different priorities. It stresses 1) the creation of coalitions among special interest groups, 2) support or opposition on specific legislation and 3) concentration on Senate and House seats that can be won. Says William Rusher, publisher of National Review and an admiring expert on the movement: "These are the first conservative groups that really have got down to electoral and legislative nitty-gritty."

Though the organizational network is loose and right-wing groups must compete with each other for contributions, the leaders often confer on policy and tactics. Frequently the host is Richard Viguerie, 45, the direct-mail conglomerateur whose enterprises in Falls Church, Va., are expected to gross nearly $20 million this year. Viguerie, who said last week that he will work for the John Connally campaign, is at once an adviser, technician and promoter for the New Right. In his mass mailings and monthly Conservative Digest--an indulgence that ran up a $1.5 million loss last year--Viguerie plugs the newest and most active groups.

Several of them are his paying clients. The three most important organizations have all been formed since 1974. They are:

> 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.

Thanks to the brass of its chairman, Dolan, N.C.P.A.C. lately has drawn more fire from its foes than other conservative ;roups. The notoriety, including an attack against it in last month's AFL-CIO politcal newsletter, helps in the competition br conservative dollars. N.C.P.A.C. can use the money. Debts forced Dolan to suspend his own $2,000-a-month salary this ;ummer, and he is trying to raise $700,000 for the opening shots of his "Target '80" effort to defeat five prominent Democratic Senators: Frank Church of Idaho, Alan Cranston of California, George McGovern of South Dakota, John Culver of Iowa and Birch Bayh of Indiana.

Dolan got into politics as a Republican volunteer in his native state of Connecticut and at 21 was a paid organizer in the 1972 Nixon campaign. "I'm ashamed to admit that now," he says. In 1976, as a protest gesture against the major parties, he voted for the Libertarians.

Says he: "The Republican Party is a fraud.

It's a social club where rich people go to pick their noses."

Despite such contempt for the G.O.P.

--a feeling returned by many in the Republican Establishment--the party is the tude was responsible for the void. In fact, the silo was part of the obsolescent Titan system, which has been mostly replaced by Minuteman missiles. A mailing prepared for N.C.P.A.C. by Viguerie calls Church "the radical... who singlehanded has presided over the destruction of the FBI and the CIA." Church protests that his enemies are using "the big-lie technique."

Dolan can spend as much as he raises, despite the federal restriction that normally limits one political action committee to $10,000 per candidate. The reason is that N.C.P.A.C. is exploiting the "independent expenditure" loophole permitted under a 1976 Supreme Court ruling. This allows free spending provided that there is no connection between the advertiser and the political beneficiary of the advertising. In Idaho, Church does not even have an announced opponent yet. His probable rival is Republican Congressman Steven Symms, who says that he has "no reason to be interested in a dirty campaign" against Church.

That's fine with Dolan, who tells a group of prospective N.C.P.A.C. contributors: "Steve Symms will never have short-term beneficiary of much of the movement's activities. True, Viguerie is taking on more Democratic House candidates as clients. But most of the New Right hit lists feature only Democrats.

The most important is Church. According to the congressional scorecards maintained by both liberal and conservative lobbying organizations, Church is closer to the Democratic center than to the left. But because of his celebrity as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, defeating him would be a big victory for the New Right. And he is particularly vulnerable because Idaho usually votes conservative in federal elections.

Dolan's approach is to start early and hit hard on the incumbent's record. An N.C.P.A.C. affiliate in Idaho began TV and radio commercials in June. Initially Church was accused of having "almost always opposed a strong national defense." The TV spot was taped in front of an empty ICBM silo, implying that Church's attitude say anything negative about Frank Church. We'll talk about all the negative stuff." And in Idaho, where air time is cheap, N.C.P.A.C. will talk about its view of Church's record over and over. One radio spot was aired 150 times a day throughout the state for five days. The cost was just $4,000. Predicts Dolan: "By 1980 there will be people voting against Church without remembering why."

While N.C.P.A.C. wages war with words, others affiliated with the New Right are attempting to organize single-interest groups against Church. A new antiabortion group called Stop the Baby Killers, with Idaho Congressman George Hansen as honorary chairman, describes Church, Culver and Bayh as "men who apparently think it's perfectly okay to slaughter unborn infants." In fact, Church favors a constitutional amendment that would outlaw abortion in most circumstances. He is also opposed to controls on firearms. But the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, a national group with an active chapter in Idaho, finds him wanting. Says its chairman, Alan Gottlieb: "There's no question that Steve Symms would be a better Senator on our issue. Church votes the way he does because he'd be tarred and feathered if he didn't." The National Right to Work Committee, Stop ERA and other single-issue groups are expected to work against Church and most of the other "targeted" Democrats as well.

The ferocity of this assault may turn out to be an error. The intended victims have begun organizing their re-election campaigns earlier than they would in a "normal" pre-election year. N.C.P.A.C.'s gambit is also causing dissension among New Right strategists, who are not as united as they seem. Weyrich's newsletter openly criticized Dolan's approach in Idaho and warned that he risked a backlash favoring Church. Weyrich's apprehension that Church may be perceived as the home-town underdog being attacked by alien bullies matches exactly Church's own strategy for survival.

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