Opposing President Gerald Ford's election, Viguerie in 1976 unsuccessfully sought the vice-presidential nomination of the American Independent Party, which had been formed eight years earlier by George Wallace.

Conservative activist and political candidate Jeff Bell applied the strategy in 1978 to unseat longtime liberal Republican Senator Clifford Case in the 1978 New Jersey primary.

[11] Bell was defeated in the general election, but his unexpected primary victory was considered a turning point for conservative activist efforts against establishment Republicans.

"[12] With ghostwriter L. Brent Bozell Jr., Goldwater published The Conscience of a Conservative, saying its purpose was "to awaken the American people to a realization of how far we had moved from the old constitutional concepts toward the new welfare state.

When their attempts all failed and Nixon choose moderate Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., they saw it as pandering to a liberal consensus represented by New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller.

Viguerie's Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), had been founded by William F. Buckley Jr. and would play an important role in helping Goldwater secure the Republican nomination.

On March 7, 1962 Viguerie and the YAF held a sold out event entitled "A Conservative Rally for World Liberation from Communism" at Madison Square Garden in New York City attended by 18,500 mostly young people with senators John Tower, Strom Thurmond, and Goldwater as featured speakers.

[12] Viguerie would later write of his opinion of the event, saying "I would nominate the Madison Square Garden rally as the day the modern conservative movement had its public debut.

But when thousands were lined up around Madison Square Garden and the speeches and sellout crowd were front-page, 'above the fold' news the next day in The New York Times, the conservative movement leapt onto the national political stage — and it was a movement largely inspired by Goldwater and the new brand of conservatism he shared with intellectuals such as William F. Buckley, Jr., M. Stanton Evans, Russell Kirk, Frank S. Meyer, William F. Rusher and L. Brent Bozell Jr."[12] In late 1962 YAF moved their headquarters to Washington, D.C. Viguerie moved into a house there on Capital Hill with his new bride Elaine O'Leary Viguerie.

The organization had racked up $20,000 in debt and Viguerie had to seek donations from wealthy donors on the right such as Eddie Rickenbacker, Charles Edison, and J. Howard Pew.

[14] The main voice for remaining within the Republican party was William F. Buckley a policy Viguerie shared, "we had a sense that even though Goldwater had lost the election, his grassroots support demonstrated that millions of Americans thought he was right on many issues.

"[14] His company also marketed many conservatives seeking elected office including "congressmen Phil Crane and Bob Dornan, Ron Paul, John Ashbrook, Sens.

Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond, California state senator H. L. 'Bill' Richardson, and candidates Max Rafferty, Howard Phillips, Jeff Bell and G. Gordon Liddy.

The Senator was aided in his pursuit by his policy, beginning in 1970, of signing fund-raising letters for Democratic candidates for which he demanded nothing in return except the names and addresses of the people responding.

…the people who mail $25 million a year to his clients get riled up over school busing, guns, law and order, pornography, permissive education, and the cause of Governor George C. Wallace of Alabama, whom most of them love.

[17] After Wallace withdrew, Viguerie began to focus on the American Independent Party to oppose Republican President Gerald Ford and Democratic challenger Jimmy Carter.

[20] Having anticipated this outcome two days before he told a reporter that he was satisfied with the results of his campaigns because "everybody is now saying what I started out saying back in 1964" and that he had cleared the way for a fellow Southerner like Carter to be accepted as a genuine contender, "There are no longer any real regional differences.

At the opening of the convention a party platform was agreed on that declared their opposition for several ideas including the Equal Rights Amendment, amnesty for draft dodgers, the individual income tax, legalized abortion, forced busing, foreign aid, membership in the United Nations, and gun control.

[23] Viguerie ran as Morris' Vice President choice, promising to use his direct-mail expertise to raise a big budget for the national campaign and to turn over his mailing lists to the party.

[17] The front-runner going into the convention was former Georgia governor and staunch segregationist Lester Maddox (previously a Democrat) with his colorful personality being viewed as a positive that could draw media attention and help the party reach the threshold of five percent of the national vote that would secure it federal funding.

[25] On the first ballot the party chose Maddox as its presidential nominee - beating challengers Morris and former Louisiana representative John Rarick (previously a Democrat).

[25] Dyke, who beat Viguerie for the vice presidential slot, had gained fame in Conservative circles for a hard-line stand against student unrest at the University of Wisconsin (which included the Sterling Hall bombing) during the Vietnam War.

Attorney General Louis J. Lefkowitz charged that the group (previously accused of links to the South Korean Central Intelligence Agency) had siphoned off the majority of $1.5 million in donations collected in 1975 for Southeast Asian children.

This began in 1981 after Ronald Reagan had won the Presidency and the effectiveness of Viguerie's direct mail approach faded, as it had been geared to rally conservatives who felt they had been unfairly sidelined.

Reverend Moon's attache Bo Hi Pak purchased the Tyson's Corner office building owned by Viguerie's firm for $10 million and took over its maintenance and administration.

Asked by Campaigns and Elections in May 2000 what his immediate goals were, Viguerie answered: To use the Internet to involve Americans in the political process, to help conservatives gain an advantage over the left.

[6]Writing in The Nation, David Corn noted that Viguerie "raised money for Judicial Watch" and is associated with Larry Klayman, a conservative lawyer and activist who had been a failed candidate for the Republican nomination for US Senate in Florida in 2004.

In 2007 Viguerie co-founded the American Freedom Agenda, described as "a coalition established to restore checks and balances and civil liberties protections under assault by the executive branch.

Congressman Ron Paul, whom Viguerie described as "truly a principled conservative in the grand tradition of Robert A. Taft, Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan" and who "has differentiated himself from all the other candidates, whose allegiance is to Big Government Republicanism.

"[37] In a July 2009 article for Sojourners Magazine entitled "When Governments Kill," Viguerie spoke strongly against capital punishment, calling for a moratorium on it to discuss its surrounding issues, hoping that will pave a path to abolition.