Amid the doom-and-gloom predictions for Donald Trump on Nov. 8, there are also rumblings inside the Republican Party over its future.

That future needs to be debated, says Richard Viguerie, known in politics for pioneering direct-mail outreach in the 1970s that’s credited for helping Ronald Reagan win the White House in 1980.

Viguerie

“It goes back to 1912,” he says, “when Teddy Roosevelt left the Republican Party and split the Republican vote, and allowed Woodrow Wilson with less than 42 percent of the vote to be elected president.”

Viguerie says the big-government wing of the Republican Party has controlled it ever since, but he remains hopeful that will change.

He likens grassroots conservatives to the Jews wandering in the desert for 40 years until their leaders passed away.

“And we’re not going to get to the political Promised Land,” he predicts, “until we get new leaders.”

“Democrats want to change America. The GOP establishment just wants to stay in power,” American Family Radio radio talk show host Bryan Fischer wrote in a commentary this week that, like Viguerie, blames Republican leaders for creating discontent that allowed Trump to gain the GOP nomination.

Viguerie now oversees a political website, Conservative HQ, where he is urging conservatives to vote for Trump.

In a timely commentary at Conservative HQ, Viguerie predicts a “new and energetic conservative-populist coalition” that is touting issues a majority of voters support. Those issues include securing our national borders, rebuilding the economy and creating jobs, and declaring war on radical Islam.