In June 1979, Falwell took a brief leave from his revamped “I Love America” tour—it was now playing at state capitol buildings from coast to coast, earning huge crowds and enormous revenues—to meet with a group of prominent conservative activists. Among them were Howard Phillips, a free-market advocacy wonk and Jewish convert to evangelicalism, and Richard Viguerie, a campaign strategist who had perfected direct-mail technology as a means of mobilizing Christian voters. The organizer was Paul Weyrich, a Catholic journalist turned political insider who in 1973 had cofounded the Heritage
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