Richard Viguerie on the 2018 Congressional Midterms: ‘It Does Not Look Good for Conservatives’

“It does not look good for conservatives,” conservative icon Richard Viguerie tells Breitbart News when asked his prognosis for the 2018 Congressional midterms.

“The reason I say that, and I’ve studied this extensively and I’ve written and discussed it with maybe 100 national conservative leaders, the Left is setting records in terms of adding support for their organization, growing their donors, money they’re raising,” Viguerie notes.

Viguerie, who began his career in 1961 as a protegé of William F. Buckley, Jr. when he became executive secretary of the Young Americans for Freedom, went on to become the pioneer of direct mail fundraising for conservatives in the late 1960s, says the problem is a lack of energy on the Right, and a surplus of it on the Left:

The Left, many of their organizations are growing 200, 300, 500 percent. As an example, the ACLU, a one hundred year old liberal organization, year in and year out they raise about five and a half million dollars. In the twelve months after Trump was elected, they raised 93 million dollars. A high percent of that money, in fact, most of it, is going to be spent in 2018 directed at Republicans. They’re going to spend five million plus dollars in Florida alone, a state that allows convicted felons to vote. So that’s going to add four or five hundred thousand Democrat voters to the rolls in Florida, and Trump only carried Florida by 125,000 votes.

Ironically, in the era of Trump–who famously disdained “low energy” political rival Jeb Bush in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries, Viguerie observes what many political observers have noted over the past year: low energy on the Right.

“I see that energy all across the Left. Planned Parenthood, this organization, that liberal organization. I don’t see the same energy on the Right. I see low energy on the conservative side,” Viguerie says:

We’re supposed to be the party of entrepreneurs, conservatives, Republicans, but the entrepreneurship these days is all on the Left.

I’m very very concerned. I think our people are asleep, it’s just business as usual. I don’t see that they are growing conservative organizations.

Viguerie warns that if Democrats are successful in making the 2018 midterm elections a “change” election, it will be bad news for Republicans.

“If this election is the same as 2014, 2016, both these elections were change elections, and Republicans did very well. However, if the 2018 election is a change election, we’re going to have our head handed to us,” Viguerie warns.

Viguerie’s warning comes as the Real Clear Politics Average of Polls shows that the Democrats have increased their advantage in the generic Congressional ballot to 8.5 percent.

The conservative icon, who still runs one of the largest and most successful conservative fundraising and marketing organizations in the country at the age of 84, has a solution, if the Republican powers that be are willing to listen.

“We’ve got to change the narrative. We’ve got to nationalize the election around our issues. We’ve got to brand the Democrats. And I don’t see any of that being done,” he says.

“So, it doesn’t have to be this way in November, but unless things change, we’re heading for real strong losses and defeats in November this year,” Viguerie notes.

“Conservatives, Republicans, never win elections unless they are nationalized,” he adds for emphasis, then spells out exactly how Republicans can do that.

“We have to nationalize the election around our issues, such as open borders the Democrats favor, sanctuary cities, amnesty:

Brand the Democrats for the Catholic voters as anti-Catholic

Brand the Democrats for the Evangelical voters as anti-Christian

Brand the Democratic Party as dangerous extremists, moving far Left, so far Left they are going to fall off the planet.

Viguerie notes that in addition to branding the Democratic Party negatively, conservatives have one key opportunity to make a positive statement to attract two key demographic groups that have traditionally not voted strongly Republican.

“We’ve got to appeal to Black voters and Hispanic voters on an issue that Trump started out the 2016 campaign but then for some reason dropped it,” Viguerie adds:

The issue that you can take the black vote quickly up to 15, 16, 17  18 percent from the traditional 5, 6, 7 percent is education. There are millions of black mothers out there that realize liberals are condemning their children to a terrible fate with failed public schools. Stressing education–how we are going to take the public schools away from control of the unions and give their kids a good education–is going to do significant things for the black vote for Republicans, as well as Hispanics.

“We’ve got to recognize there’s a wave coming that’s going to wipe out a lot of conservatives if we continue operating as we have been for the last year. We need to make major changes, and they’re within our control. We can nationalize the election. We can all play a role, whether it’s at the national level, the local level, or the state level,” Viguerie concludes.