“We are in real danger of being out-organized by a small number of highly motivated right wing nuts.”

-- from a Pres. Ford campaign memo written about the Reagan camp shortly after Gov. Ronald Reagan's landslide victory (66% to 33%) in the 1976 Texas primary—the greatest defeat ever for a sitting president according to author Rick Perlstein in his book, “The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan.” 

Some of the groups who were funding Reagan at this juncture, and in the future, included the following:

• George Wallace’s old American Independence Party 
• The National Conservative Political Action Committee
• The National Right to Work Committee
• The American Medical Association’s PAC
• The NRA
• The American Conservative Union
• The Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress
• The Heritage Foundation. 

“Many of the members of these groups are not loyal Republicans or Democrats,“ the memo also noted. ”They are alienated from both parties because neither takes a sympathetic view toward their issues. Particularly those groups controlled by Vigurie [sic] hold a ‘rule or ruin’ attitude toward the GOP.” Perlstein then lambasts the Republican establishment, who didn't even know enough in 1976 to spell Richard Viguerie's name correctly. 

More on Viguerie here. 

Read the book.