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Howard Phillips Was DOGE Before DOGE: Jim Pfaff on The Bobby Gunther Walsh Show | Aug 7, 2026

Published: August 7, 2026
Network: WAEB
Analysis: Conservative Caucus President Jim Pfaff

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Decades before Elon Musk took a job cutting government waste, Howard Phillips held nearly the identical post under Richard Nixon — and when Nixon didn’t follow through, Phillips walked out and founded The Conservative Caucus in 1974. On the August 7 edition of WAEB’s Bobby Gunther Walsh show, Conservative Caucus President Jim Pfaff told that founding story and noted that Reason Magazine recently called Phillips DOGE before DOGE was DOGE. From there the conversation ranged widely: what a Barry Goldwater presidency would have prevented, the $5 to $10 trillion paid out under the Great Society programs, Margaret Sanger’s eugenicist roots, Anthony Fauci’s contempt finding disappearing from the news, the 72-vaccine childhood schedule, and the midterm outlook. Pfaff closed with a warning about the one weak factor for Republicans heading into November.

Topics Covered

• Founded in 1974: DOGE Before DOGE Was DOGE
• What a Goldwater Presidency Would Have Prevented
• Margaret Sanger and the Eugenicist Movement
• Fauci Found in Contempt — and the Story Disappears
• 72 Vaccines and the Government School Monopoly
• Midterms: The Ick Factor and Thune’s 80% Bill
• Key Takeaways

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Founded in 1974: DOGE Before DOGE Was DOGE

Asked by host Bobby Gunther Walsh for the backstory on The Conservative Caucus, Pfaff went straight to the founder. Howard Phillips — one of the foundational leaders of the post-Goldwater era conservative movement — had been appointed by Richard Nixon to a position almost exactly like the one Elon Musk was appointed to: cutting government waste and spending. Nixon didn’t follow through, Phillips left in frustration, and in 1974 he founded The Conservative Caucus to build a large grassroots presence that could affect how Congress did things.

“And in fact, Reason Magazine on their website recently very accurately wrote an article saying that Howard Phillips was doge, before Doge was Doge.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Pfaff ran through the organization’s record: work on government spending, asserting basic American values founded in the Constitution and the Judeo-Christian ethic, helping elect Reagan, playing a role in the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress, and fighting the Panama Canal Treaty and most favored nation status for China.

“We are an America first organization from our founding, and we’re the nation’s oldest conservative grassroots organization.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

What a Goldwater Presidency Would Have Prevented

The mention of Barry Goldwater sent Walsh wondering aloud what would have happened had Goldwater prevailed in 1964. Pfaff’s answer was unequivocal:

“I can guarantee you that trillions of dollars in excessive welfare would not have happened.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Goldwater lost to Lyndon Johnson, and Johnson launched the Great Society programs in 1965 — Medicaid, Medicare, and a massive expansion in welfare payments. Citing economist Thomas Sowell, Pfaff argued that the Black family, while suffering under the horror of Jim Crow, was structurally strong before those programs — and that the breakdown of the Black family, and of the American family in general, can be attributed to much of what was done there.

Sowell’s documentation, Pfaff said, shows growth was taking place on the foundation of families — family structures stronger than white family structures at the time:

“In the 1950s and ’60s, the Black family was stronger in terms of divorce, staying together, having successful children.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Pfaff, an Indianapolis native, offered a hometown proof point: Black entrepreneurship was thriving in Indianapolis in the 1920s. Madame Walker built an empire of cosmetics and products for women — the Walker Theater still stands in Indianapolis today, a building she built with her own money, with a theater and her offices inside, in a thriving district of Black blues and jazz bars. Segregationist pressures — including the KKK’s control and dominance in Indiana at the time — began breaking that down, but the Great Society was, in his telling, the nail in the coffin, producing the family breakdown that Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan documented while working in the Johnson administration. Pfaff’s summary rule: “most societal ills that we have suffered under after the Civil War are directly related to some government policy or some government program.”

Margaret Sanger and the Eugenicist Movement

Walsh raised Margaret Sanger’s history and pointed to two years, 2012 and 2013, in New York City where more black babies were aborted than were born. Pfaff didn’t dispute the premise:

“No, listen, Planned Parenthood was in part designed for that very purpose.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Sanger wanted what she decided ought to be sexual freedom, Pfaff said, and she did want the eradication of the black family — she made statements to that effect. She came out of the eugenicist movement, the same idea that animated Hitler in Germany, where the targets went beyond Jews to invalids and others deemed not useful to society. It was a Nietzschean concept, Pfaff argued — weeding out “bad” members of society to make society stronger — and it saw no value in human life.

“I would argue when it comes to abortion that we’ve got a bit of a death culture in this country that has developed over— certainly over 60 years since Roe v. Wade, but certainly a bit before then, when abortion was beginning to propagate around the country.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Fauci Found in Contempt — and the Story Disappears

Walsh turned to Anthony Fauci, annoyed that days after Fauci testified — and one day after a contempt finding — the story was buried on about the third page even at Fox News. He has covered it every day, he said, precisely because he doesn’t want it to go away. It follows the pattern we documented when Fauci pleaded the Fifth and was held in contempt.

“he was just found in contempt yesterday, and that’s nowhere to be found. They want this story to go away.”
— Bobby Gunther Walsh, The Bobby Gunther Walsh Show

Walsh read a quote he’d seen — you know who didn’t get to plead the Fifth? Every person who died alone in a nursing home, every person who lost their job for not getting the jab, every military person dismissed, every small business person who lost their livelihood. He recalled the beagle experiments: under Fauci, taxpayer money paid for experiments on beagle puppies that included surgically cutting their vocal cords so you couldn’t hear them crying or barking.

Pfaff widened the lens to the American Public Health Service, where these sorts of creepy things have happened for a long period of time — Fauci held a government job doing this kind of work for more than 40 years:

“And most of the creepy stories that we get from the 1970s on are him. Don’t forget this. He really screwed up the whole AIDS epidemic issue.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Pfaff also laid the vaccine liability shield at Fauci’s feet: “We actually passed the law taking all liability away from vaccine mass manufacturers on the guise that vaccines are so important.” He was careful to note he considers vaccines an important part of public health — but no organization or corporate entity should ever operate with zero liability for not doing things right, not doing the research right, not taking responsibility for anything. “But yet we provide that there under, under a lie.”

72 Vaccines and the Government School Monopoly

Walsh contrasted his childhood — a vaccine or two — with today’s cocktails of 5 or 10 vaccines in one shot, citing a number from Kennedy of at least 67 or 72 vaccines kids have by the time they’re age 6. Pfaff agreed it’s insane, recalling that the famous MMR vaccine — mumps, measles, rubella — used to be given individually and at parents’ discretion. The mechanism that changed that, he argued, is the government monopoly on schools requiring these things to even attend. If the system were dominated by private education, or if school choice let people go to whatever school they want, individual schools could decide for themselves.

“But when you have a government monopoly over schools, and this is why they do it, you— we have a government monopoly over schools, you can require every parent to have to comply to some government bureaucrat’s idea of what’s important.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

That, he said, is how you get 72 vaccines: a combination of people like Anthony Fauci who think they’re God and science and know everything, and pharmaceutical companies that want to make a buttload of money. An older Gen Xer, Pfaff described his generation as pretty darn healthy precisely because it was exposed to life:

“we were exposed to things in life. We survived life. And we do— did not need this new regimen of 72 vaccines to take care of kids. It’s an outrage. It’s an absolute outrage.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Midterms: The Ick Factor and Thune’s 80% Bill

With Pfaff calling in from Bloomington, Indiana — he splits time between there and Fairfax, Virginia — Walsh asked for his gut feeling on the midterms. Walsh set the table with the numbers he’s seeing: the enthusiasm gap has flipped, with 70% of MAGA Republicans saying they’re motivated to vote against 63% of Democrats, while the left wins the generic ballot but loses once actual candidates are named. Pfaff, drawing on his long time in politics, said he’s still watching how it develops — but his instincts point one direction:

“there is a growing ick factor amongst Americans related to these so-called Democrat Socialists of America. And they are communists. They’re flat-out communists.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

On the Iran war, Pfaff noted a surprising number: Americans trust the Republican Party to handle the Iran situation far more than Democrats — plus 2 for Republicans, minus 17 for Democrats. That matters because the Iran war drives the one economic frustration Americans highlight most: filling up the gas tank once or twice a week at nearly twice the old price, while the rest of the economy is doing fantastic. The catch, in his view, is Washington itself. Pfaff spent 8 years on Capitol Hill — “It is more stupid now than it was stupid when I was there.”

“When John Thune can’t pass an 80% bill and is not willing, like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer were, to shove Obamacare down our faces and they can’t push and shove for the Save America Act.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

That intransigence, Pfaff concluded, is the one weak factor for Republicans going into November — a Senate leadership not willing to do anything that really matters. It is the same pressure point we examined in our analysis of Thune defying the 80% who back the Save America Act.

Key Takeaways

1. DOGE before DOGE – Howard Phillips held a Nixon-era post almost exactly like Elon Musk’s waste-cutting role; when Nixon didn’t follow through, he founded The Conservative Caucus in 1974 — now the nation’s oldest conservative grassroots organization.
2. The Great Society’s price – Pfaff estimates $5 to $10 trillion paid out in those programs since 1965, and attributes much of the breakdown of the Black family — and the American family generally — to them.
3. Sanger’s design – Planned Parenthood was in part designed to eradicate the black family, Pfaff said, rooted in the same eugenicist movement that animated Hitler.
4. Fauci’s story is being buried – Found in contempt one day, nowhere on the front pages the next; Pfaff notes most of the creepy Public Health Service stories since the 1970s trace to Fauci, including the no-liability shield for vaccine manufacturers.
5. 72 vaccines via school monopoly – A government monopoly over schools lets bureaucrats force compliance on every parent; school choice would break the mechanism.
6. Midterm math – Enthusiasm has flipped to 70%-63% in Republicans’ favor and the GOP leads on Iran by 19 points, but Thune’s failure to push the Save America Act is the one weak factor going into November.

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About The Conservative Caucus:
The Conservative Caucus is a grassroots public policy action organization, formed in 1974. Headed by President Jim Pfaff, the Caucus is committed to advancing free enterprise, limited government, and traditional values.

Originally broadcast Aug 7, 2026 on WAEB’s Bobby Gunther Walsh show.