1997: Robespierre Of The Right

Only the purest of the movement had gathered at Coronado: men like Oliver North, Pat Robertson, and Larry Pratt (whom the press had recently drummed into exile for his alleged ties to white supremacists). In the past, the group's clandestine revival meetings had spawned liberal warnings of a right-wing conspiracy.

But this morning, the council would plot against its own internal enemies: GOP apostates. And the chief conspirator was Paul Weyrich, the man who founded the Heritage Foundation, orchestrated the party's alliance with evangelical Christians, and, more than any other figure, organized the right inside the Beltway. "I will tell you that this is a bitter turn for me," Weyrich confessed. "I have spent thirty years of my life working in Washington, working on the premise that if we simply got our people into leadership that it would make a difference.... And yet we are getting the same policies from them that we got from their [Rockefeller] Republican predecessors." It was time, Weyrich concluded, to contemplate the once unconscionable: another revolution, this time against "our people."

Funny how in 1987 Weyrich blamed the democratic process for someone as inexperienced as Oliver North being allowed to fumble the ball during the Iran Contra scandal, but just 10 short years later, he was ready to ask for North's help to stage a revolution against the American people...