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Feulner, Weyrich, and the The Heritage Foundation

Washington, D.C., 7/30/25 —  Edwin J. Feulner, Jr., (R.I.P., 7/18/2025) best known as the man who put the Heritage Foundation on the map, was a colossus in Washington. From 1977 to 2013, with much determination and creativity, he made Heritage the go-to place for the definitive conservative position on nearly everything. Feulner set the standard for the entire conservative movement of excellent work product, expert management, and skillful internecine cooperation.

To give history its due, however, Feulner was the partner, but not the originator, of the concept that became The Heritage Foundation. The idea, and the name, of the Heritage Foundation came from  Paul Weyrich. 

Paul Weyrich was a newsman who came to Washington in 1966 to work as press secretary to Senator Gordon Allott (R-Co). He soon met Ed Feulner, the Administrative Assistant to Congressman Phil Crane (R-IL). Crane was unusual in that he was a conservative who came to Congress with the goal of turning the country around, so he was willing to listen to new ideas. 

That time is now regarded by some pundits as a halcyon era of cross-party cooperation. What cross-party cooperation meant was that conservatives routinely lost. The two young aides quickly realized that Republicans did not know how to fight legislative battles, or how to win elections.  

Weyrich watched issues develop and saw the outcomes, but couldn’t figure out how the other side was making it all happen. Then one day in 1968 he was sent to a meeting where the scales fell from his eyes. He said later: “They had the aides to all the Senators there, and they had the authority to commit their bosses to specific strategies. They had the representatives of foundations, which could supply data on this or that. They had a legal group. They had the outside lobbying groups, and they could say, ‘We need some pressure when we get down the line, and if they come up with this amendment, we want the whole country alerted.’ And they had a couple columnists who said, ‘I can write something, just give me the timing on it.’

It was one of the best meetings I ever attended, and it gave me a tremendous insight into how the opposition operated.  I was determined from that moment on that if I had any reason to be here at all, it was to duplicate that effort on the Right. ” [1]  

After this meeting, Paul Weyrich conceived what he called the “Inside/Outside Operation.” It was a vision shared by Ed Feulner, in the pursuit of which the two men worked for decades.

The Inside was the working together of Congressional staff with authority to commit their bosses to a course of action. The Outside was the research support for use by the Inside, along with legal coverage, grassroots activism, and media.   

First, Weyrich organized the Inside. It took little time to realize that the Democrats ran the show, and the Republicans were asleep at the switch.When Weyrich first arrived on Capitol Hill, the staff of conservative Senators and Members of Congress did not strategize with each other. But the Democratic Study Group, set up and paid for with the staff allowances of Democratic Members of Congress, had 30 staffers assigned to do research, write speeches, and develop issues for every Democratic Member of Congress.

One of the first projects that Weyrich and Feulner worked together on was the Conservative Lunch Club. After a few years of subtly raising the consciousness of Hill staffers to think of themselves as conservatives, the group evolved into a conservative whip group. Then Paul and Ed moved to the next step. Together with Congressman Philip Crane and others, they planned a shared-staff operation for conservatives. Two years later, the Republican Study Committee, an equivalent of the Democratic Study Group, was launched. 

The RSC continues today as a conservative caucus of House Republicans which enables Members of Congress to work together to promote a principled legislative agenda to limit government, strengthen our national defense, boost the American economy, preserve traditional values and balance the budget.

Weyrich conceived the Outside Operation but had no idea how to fund it. He was not wealthy, and did not mingle with the wealthy. Then Providence intervened. One day in 1970 the secretary who usually handled Senator Allott’s correspondence was out of the office, so Paul did the task. There was a letter from  Joseph Coors, asking the Senator to recommend somewhere he could dedicate resources to help America. Within a year, a corporation known as Analysis and Research Associates was set up.  

Using that entity as the “Outside,” Weyrich and Feulner worked against Patrick Moynihan’s guaranteed income scheme marshalling opposition in both House and Senate in a way that had never been seen before. Moynihan, later a Democrat Senator from New York, was President Nixon’s chief of Domestic Policy – so defeating something the White House asked for was a major political upset. For sure, it proved that the concept of the Inside/Outside operation was sound: conservatives (in those days there were conservative Democrats too!) could win battles and influence policy by working together. That had never been done before! Doing it could – and did – change the way conservatives behaved on Capitol Hill. Inside Congress, staff was working together across offices and party lines. On the Outside, The Heritage Foundation was founded in 1973 to provide research support to get the conservative point of view in the hands of the staffers inside Congress. 

Paul Weyrich became the Heritage Foundation’s first president, but his passion for family and social issues was spurned by the board of directors. In 1974, Weyrich left Heritage to found the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress (CSFC), the second conservative political action committee in existence. Later, he founded the Free Congress Foundation, which researched social issues because no other conservative think tank would take them up, and Coalitions for America, which networked conservatives across all interest areas.

Ed Feulner was President of The Heritage Foundation from 1977 to 2013; and again from 2017 to 2018. From its humble beginning over 50 years ago, Heritage is now considered one of the most effective think tanks in the world. It came into existence through the friendship and cooperative spirit of Edwin J. Feulner, Jr., and Paul M. Weyrich. Paul Weyrich’s goal after attending that random meeting in 1968 had been accomplished.

Connie Marshner was a close associate of Paul Weyrich’s from 1971 forward. She was chairman of the Library Court Coalition, the conservative movement’s social issues clearinghouse, under the auspices of Coalitions for America, another Outside organization founded by Weyrich.

Connie is writing an authorized biography of Paul Weyrich.

[1] Quoted in Broder, David S., Changing of the Guard, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1980, p.179 ff

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Copyright (c ) Connie Marshner, 2025. You may quote from passages in this article, and/or post it at websites if credit is given to the author.