Capitol Ideas/Republicans Tarnished

...At a party given for Jeane Kirkpatrick, I had an opportunity to discuss this with Phyllis Schlafly, who is by a mile my favorite lady activist on the Amerlcan political scene...

...someone said we should call on them to "pass the prayer amendment, vote the B-I bomber, and get on with i t . " Bob Hope provided the main entertainment, and it was a pleasure to see him in such good form...

...They actually want to win...

...Of course, the whole problem is that the defining trait of "moderate" Republicans is that they do in fact assent to the principles of their opponents...

...I suppose that hearing Falwell at First Baptist is the American equivalent of seventeenth-century Englishmen flocking to hear those Puritan divines...

...There must have been 250 tables, each with linen napkins and several bottles of wine...

...At this my spirits soared unaccountably...

...Does Geraldine Ferraro...

...And they claim to be Republicans, threatening to roust one from one's seat...

...Many celebrities were on hand...

...called out a disheveled wino, his arms out horizontally, as a young couple came out blinking into the glare...

...Scale would have us believe that his gunwielding associates were at the heart of the civil rights movement, though I do not recall his alleged chumminess with Dr...

...As long as the Republicans continue to accept their adversaries' criticisms in principle ("the government today is taking care of more people than ever b e f o r e . . . " "we have appointed more women than ever b e f o r e . . . "), then the Left can be expected to keep attacking...

...Bobby Seale, the vaunted revolutionary, complained to me that he is without a publisher for his new book-a cookbook that fell short of the obligatory number of low-salt recipes...

...Because he had met him at an Elks Club cocktail party in Indiana a few years ago, and George had seemed like a pretty good fellow...

...I was impressed at how seriously they took their task, in view of its foreordained outcome...

...Green Co., with "Cool Tomato Sandwich Shop," a "Welcome Republicans" sign, huge glass skyscrapers towering up behind, the sun beating down, and the street strewn with paper and leaflets...

...Criswell in fact delivered the final benediction at the Republican Convention...

...Alas I missed the earlier service, with Rev...

...The Republicans duck and cower on ERA, saying the "problem" should be "dealt with legislatively" (i.e., by statute...

...Even though it was still plenty hot, most of the men were wearing jackets and ties and kept them on...

...The Son of God kept the Sabbath...

...W e l l , I certainly didn't want to spend a whole evening listening to Gerry Ford and the Doledrums, so I eagerly accepted when Tom Pauken asked me if I would like to go with him to the party given by Nelson Bunker Hunt at his ranch about 30 miles away...

...I bumped into my friend Jon Utley...

...I went over to inspect and couldn't help noticing how placid and calm he looked as he was quizzed by the florid, perspiring Douglas Kiker...

...prudently kept it off the screen, knowing that many viewers wouldn't have known how to handle it...

...Bob Dole, no less, was heard to extol the achievements of Reaganomics, even though in Washington he is putty in the hands of the Tax Increase Consensus...

...But any blackguard who avers that she actually did it (including the vile reviewers in the New York Times and Time, who blandly presume her guilt) has a fight on his hands...

...And he brings to light the curious web of relationships among certain politically motivated groups...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1984 9 Criswell...

...This time last year he came out for the Washington consensus position of higher taxes and less defense spending...

...Washington, D.C...

...In other words, it was a document for Dallas, not Washington...

...Nevertheless Criswell was on the program at 11 a.m.--an embarrassment of riches indeed...

...Twenty-six times, said Mudd...

...So that's why Bush and the Doledrums and Sen...

...An idea, you might say, whose time has come...

...Ronald Reagan, he said at one point, "wears his hearing aid in his right ear because he doesn't want to hear from his left, and I don't blame him...

...Bunker Hunt, he added, "owns so much silver that he won't die, he'll just tarnish...

...Sixty-two percent of them supported a nuclear freeze, according to an oft-quoted Los Angeles Times poll...

...One day I heard M. Stanton Evans say in the Railroad Lounge: "What the Republican party needs is some orators...

...Thus frauds multiply and prosper, though not always...

...We had our usual discussion about tax rates in the Third World, and then, gesturing at the lavish scene around us, he said that this was how many Europeans imagined that people in America live: Cadillacs, cattle ranch, the idle rich...

...Reckon the rattlesnakes should get one or two of them," he reflected...

...For the delegates it was pretty much a working holiday...

...Yew mean water moccasins, daddy," said his rhinestone-spectacled wife, who came in from the kitchen carrying a most welcome tray of Coors and Budweiser...

...They set off walking fast without looking back...

...Tommy and I, who love her, know she did not...

...now and then, a nervous-looking, welldressed couple would emerge from the cool, dark shopping cave, only to run a gauntlet of proletarian inspection and comment...

...Kunstler would have us believe that the peace movement was vindicated by events, but the bloody tyrannies that rose up after the fall of Southeast Asia proved the movement to have been tragically wrong, and recently North Vietnamese officials have boasted to European journalists of how they duped the peace movement...

...In her acceptance speech, she said that if elected the Democrats would "pass" the ERA...

...Also education was impaired together with standards of intelligent thought...

...For example, in its lead editorial on the first day of the convention the paper chided the GOP's "flat worlders" who don't realize that "most Americans believe that the world is round...

...Nelson Bunker had put in 'an appearance for the cameras...

...Ah, how I wish there were the space to conduct you through Mr...

...It was so well air*conditioned that you needed your jacket...

...I can recall no TV comment on the Democratic platform, a document which gave the green light to sodomy...

...But this in no way mitigates the fury of those who accuse him of having "manipulated" the silver market...

...so far unsuccessfully...

...Jerry Falwell presiding...

...Women, the largest voting bloc in America, will have a tremendous impact on the coming election...

...He had actually been in SDS...

...Well I should hurry on to the convention, which I am sure you are dying to hear about one more time...

...My pal and I motored back to Manhattan, snickering all the way...

...I formed the impression that there might be other rich folk clustered inside the doorway, anxiously peering out to see if the coast was clear...

...Across the street there was H.L...

...Apart from being too hot, the trouble with Dallas is that it is too far to walk wherever you might be going, and you end up trying to avoid going out of doors for any reason...

...A quite astonishing amount of ink was wasted on the GOP's failure to endorse the Equal Rights Amendment...

...L a s t month in the media there was much wistful talk of the mellow Woodstock of long ago...

...Blessing by Jerry Falwell...

...I know if you got the Holy Ghost...

...Ah known it hotter," said the knobbly old fellow who was walking about pigeon-toed in cowboy boots...

...S e v e r a l people were saying that the media coverage of the convention dispensed with all pretense of impartiality...

...We were ushered into an absolutely enormous tent, or marquee as they say in Europe, for dinner...

...He senses, correctly, that as long as there is a wing of the party that believes in something, it is likely to prove more influential than the managerial rump that he represents...

...Reader) do not...

...Remember they were mostly appointed, not elected, because there weren't any contested Republican primaries...

...and so many waiters on hand that you were served within a few seconds of sitting down...

...A target that ducks and cowers only invites further bullying...

...There were steers and stage coaches, and museumpiece Conestoga-type wagons...

...beltway...

...That, I think, is very much the kind of support that Bush enjoyed at the convention, and enjoys within the party...

...As another old friend of mine in the hall, a Democrat, said: It was enough to make a Republican out of you...

...Apparently, we have reached the point in this country where our most famous newsmen are openly reluctant to expose their viewers to patriotism...

...At one point during the yuletide preparations I noted impatiently on the margin, "Gets discursive: a fine, difficult, dangerous line...

...Mainly they live in fear that someone 10 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1984 will take away their inherited privileges, and they are willing to abandon almost all principles in order to prevent this...

...In the 1960s these insufferables were called "the kids," and as they oxidize into middle age they remain kids...

...In any event her repudiation of the "San Francisco Democrats" (as a party lately gone haywire) was much better than Barry Goldwater's wretched reference to "Democrat wars" (implying a party permanently at fault...

...You know, the Gender Gap...

...Undistinguished as they were, the Republican speakers sounded considerably more conservative in Dallas than when they are safely within the Washington, D.C...

...The wino called after the retreating pair...

...Pauken then pointed out that the USCC's Campaign for Human Development is in the business of funding leftist causes, to which the bishops respbnded by raising hell with the White House and trying to get Pauken, a Catholic, fired from his job...

...McPherson's brilliant ambiguities in this allimportant conflict between infatuation and love, sensual attraction and duty, deceit and truth...

...More to the point, the largest student activist group of the era was the very conservative Young Americans for Freedom, and in 1972 the youth vote went to Richard Nixon...

...I liked what she had to say, and she was well received by the delegates, but I am not sure that she came across on TV all that well...

...Every Tom Betheli is The American Spectator's Washington correspondent...

...Well, I waaback in the hall when the President gave his acceptance speech...

...Rounds of applause for Charlton Heston, Wayne Newton, Osmond Brothers, various Dallas Cowboys and Olympic gold medal winners, Chad Everett, Dale Robertson...

...He is 81, someone said...

...From the author of Coughing in Ink and The Ultimate Weapon...

...The Alternative Influence should be mandatory reading for all journalists and those who are concerned about media coverage...

...Actually the consequences of 1960s radicalism have been squalid, albeit marginal...

...Do not on that account delay in treating yourself to this book...

...Hear ye all: I will knock down any man (and stick a jalapeno pepper on the malicious tongue of any woman) who asserts that Tommy's mother actually consummated an adulterous relationship with that serpent, that Lucien (what a name...

...Quiz Time: Who wrote the following in a Dallas newspaper: "Even if Walter Mondale had not nominated Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate, this would be the year of women in presidential politics...

...In fact, it could have the opposite effect, and there could be viewers the film cannot handle...

...Sorry readers, it would have been worth a visit, but it was just too hot for me that day, and so I decided to go and see some old Dallas friends instead, who live out toward those northerly suburbs...

...She is not a "moderate," but then she is not a Republican either...

...I think he's got good credentials," my man said...

...First Baptist inside and out looked to be uncontested Reagan country...

...Oh, she was dangerously close, as they say, to toppling over the brink, but she did not...

...And they were told yes, you may lose slowly...

...Meanwhile, I'm proud to have a sister on the cutting edge of the Republican Party's enlightenment concerning women's issues...

...She did fib to Tommy in telling him (he was only six) that she was 22, the trusting assertion of which eighteen months later causes Tommy to make a fool of himself, and she did in other ways practice little (unexplainable to her son) deceits, the opening of his eyes to which brews a great uproar of bafflement and pain and outraged protest in his soul, the vortex he must survive in order to graduate intact from the innocence of childhood...

...The gurus of personal liberation can take credit for some of the nation's growing rate of illegitimacy along with a rise in petty lawlessness, drug addiction, welfare, venereal disease, and mental illness...

...On the other hand, he was right to go On the offensive against Mondale and the Democrats in other respects, especially their disgraceful comparison o f Grenada and Afghanistan...

...The idea that the majority of the Republic's young in the 1960s and 1970s was radical is but one of the many inaccurate ideas pushed today by the keepers of the Woodstock myth...

...What is remarkable about Testing the Current is Mr...

...She was too wonderful, too good, too loving herself, for that...

...There's no downtown in Dallas," a Neiman-Marcus salesman told me a bit later...

...Kirkpatrick's comments were calculated to win Republican converts...

...It is a powerful piece of film," he counseled, "but t~ is nothing the viewer can't handle...

...King...

...Well, I hate to be a stickler for detail, but I liked a little popular music in the 1960s and no radical idea ever crossed my mind...

...The next day I went to the famously wealthy First Baptist Church downtown, where a congregation of about 1500 enjoyed a thirty-piece orchestra, a robed choir perhaps 200-strong, and a cogent sermon by its pastor of forty years, Rev...

...But for all his faults (he seems to hold his beliefs all too lightly, add can easily be talked out of them), it is predictable that Reagan will go down as a great President...

...Another note on the same page reads: "All very well, but I miss narrative dynamism...

...Someone told me that Hunt lost $1.5 billion in the silver crash of early 1980...

...I saw something of the Indiana delegation because they were bivouacked at the same hotel...

...For some reason she was wearing a medal...

...Maybe I was in a bad humor, because on second reading (oh, yes: you are richly rewarded when you turn from the last page fight back to the beginning and start over), I wasn't bothered...

...That is why they were mostly "moderates" and George Bush types...

...Why don't they say: Men and women are not the same and we should drop the pretense that they are...

...All of this spells trouble for the Republican Party...

...the awesome inroads of sin that we never named before," and our "enemies with great giant nuclear missiles pointed toward the city of Dallas"--this more a call to repentance than to higher defense spending...

...Well, he said, he was for George Bush (as were about 50 percent of all the delegates t o the convention...

...Baker don't like the conservatives...

...44 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1984...

...government--specifically ACTION Director Tom Paukenmstopped funding it in 1981...

...But my sense is that as long as the Republican party con. tinues to vote for its presidential candidate (in primaries), these people are not likely to do very well at the grassroots level...

...On a baking hot Saturday afternoon I went to Neiman-Marcus, one of the few shops on Main Street...

...In Dallas, for the benefit of the folks back home, he shucked his "growth...

...I wanted to go and inspect the tent city organized by a left-wing, U.S...

...After our show, while they roamed that hallowed field congratulating themselves and soiling their shoes, I vamoosed...

...The papers next day said it was 108 degrees at Love Field, a record...

...Wolfe...

...Then he hoisted a quart beer bottle to his lips and took a lengthy swig...

...That was Dallas Morning News columnist Ronald Reagan, Jr...

...It is real enough, I suppose, but is likely to prove lukewarm because it has little or nothing to do with the issues...

...they asked...

...Surrounding the skyscraper archipelago, effectively sealing it off, is a great encircling reef of freeways...

...someone no doubt mistakenly calculated that they could be wooed by kindness...

...For some reason the media had been admitted...

...It was a sort of coronation...

...But I (Mr...

...Even Gerry Ford was heard to make one or two pro-Reagan utterances from the podium...

...Good old Bunker was laying on quite a party for the National Conservative Political Action Committee...

...Hats off, however, to the Dallas Morning News's TV columnist, Ed Bark, who kept an eagle eye on the networks, particularly their treatment of that famous 18-minute film introducing Reagan Sr...

...Goldwater's to dissipate Republican strength...

...Business is good all the same," said another...

...They were exchanging jibes and desultory comments back and forth as they waited for the very occasional bus to come trundling up the street...

...20007 202-298-7512 In its current phase the D. T.H...

...He held a Bible next to his heart, and he wore navy-blue pinstriped trousers and well-polished twotone brown shoes...

...If they didn't they wouldn't be called moderates...

...But then consumption is virtuous and production suspect in the current leftist worldview...

...who don't want lo lose at all...

...The Dallas Times-HeraM resorted almost daily to low-grade editorial sarcasm against the Republicans...

...What a great singer he is, and what a beautiful moment it was...

...As a friend later said to me, we'll miss him when he's gone...

...Tour de force...

...He spoke fluently, without notes, for perhaps 20 minutes, touching on by-now familiar themes: the secular humanism that "tears o u r schools apart...

...To tell the truth it really wasn't very thrilling...

...I worry frankly whether Reagan has much of an agenda for his second term, when we will need forceful leadership to resist the relentless pressure from the Left...

...I swear I will never complain about Washington summers again...

...When I came here twenty years ago," said the first, "I used to tell people back in New York that the streets in Dallas are so clean that you could eat meals off them...

...Lawler raises provocative questions about the television networks' involvement with several of these organizations--ties that are little known and not well understood by the viewing public...

...Communism...

...He concluded the column: "Maureen thinks the party is moving in her direction, away from Phyllis Schlafly...

...and there were so many senators and congressmen that they weren't even introduced...

...One more time...

...The convention center was much better than the one in San Francisco, bigger and cooler and more suitable, and with even more press freebies, shamelessly accepted all 'round...

...Our moderates view the Republican party itself as a font of privilege, a very nice, cozy club with jobs and limousines, honors, paychecks, plush seats in the front row of the stalls, and loyal opI~3sition status...

...So these were people who had become delegates by virtue of their connections with the Republican hierarchy, not thanks to the voters...

...Bunker Hunt," and he seemed like a very unassuming fellow to me, especially a few minutes later when he came blundering back through the half-dark tent, tripping over chair legs and sticking out his hand to introduce himself most disarmingly to totaLstrangers...

...The problem was that the amendment had been killed in 1982, and if anyone wanted to revive it his remedy lay with a prominent Democrat, House Speaker Tip O'Neill, who in 1984 has failed to bring it up for a vote on the House floor...

...So much for the Republicans' "rightwing" convention...

...Whoom...

...Just a mass of offices piled on top of one another...

...The blinds were down and the air conditioner humming...

...He knew some of the most famous radicals of all, and he knows whatwrecks they made of their lives and how tragic their prescriptions were fbr others...

...Here you have the true meaning of "pragmatism...

...I hope so...

...McPherson's almost flawless command of his materials, especially in his handling of the central crisis of the book, which is Tommy's mother's love affair...

...Criswell has the face of a wagon-train leader heading into Indian country...

...It went on a'bit too long, and to my mind he spent too much time comparing his record with Carter's...

...She deserves one, but I am sure she had to pin it on herself...

...Phew," I said when I arrived...

...He wore a nametag: "N...

...At breakfast on the first day they were earnestly going through an inch-thick briefing book, color-coded, and thumb-indexed, to make sure that they didn't miss out on any meetings or caucuses...

...The "moderate" Republicans that Bush represents are the precise analogue of Tory Wets in England...

...He, along with about half of the delegation, had been appointed by the party's state central committee...

...He had been reading about the ACORN nuts and the peace 'n' justice nasties who were camping out in Dallas, hopi[lg to embarrass the Republicans...

...The Alternative Influence by Philip F. Lawler is the first book to probe the inner workings of nine such groups from across the political spectrum...

...Catholic Conference-funded outfit called Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now...

...master of ceremonies, Pat Boone...

...At that point'in the negotiating the Republican moderates struck what they thought was a tough bargain: Can we lose slowly on the issues...

...On the other hand, I can understand why the Left keeps up the assault...

...No one would repeat that old Dallas cliche today--not downtown, at least...

...Don't fight the word," said a young black preacher to emerging shoppers...

...At one end of the tent there was a flurry and glare of TV lights...

...I believe in fact the Conimodities Futures Trading Commission inTHE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1984 43 creased the margin requirements as the price rose, thus precipitating a selling wave...

...I quote: Chief political reporter Roger Mudd had a grand time playing shrink...

...The Alternative Influence The Impact of Investigative Reporting Groups On America's Media By Philip F. Lawler Their ranks are small, but alternative news organizations play a significant role in determining the news America reads and watches...

...How many times will Mudd talk down to viewers by leading them by the hand...

...Tom," he said, "this film will not tax your mind, it will not challenge your intellect, but it will attack your emotions head on...

...I gathered that the somewhat conservative tone to the proceedings did not greatly bother him...

...I vaguely imagined when we drove out there that sitting around a table would be: Pauken, Bunker, and myself, with maybe a few others from some inner circle of true belief...

...The Catholic bishops started picking up the ACORN check after the U.S...

...There you feel the real life of the city may be, and there you can believe that Dallas is the fastest growing city in the country: lots of land, lots of opportunity, and lots of ready and willing labor from across the Rio Grande...

...You thought wrong...

...Great...

...Among the manifold virtues of Testing the Current is that it furnishes grounds for a rousing good shouting match over the virtue of Emma MacAUister...

...What problem...

...And that, no doubt, is why Bush went out of his way to attack Richard Viguerie and the conservatives when he came to Dallas...

...Do you remember those wonderful bygone days when luncheons and suppers were spent fiercely disagreeing about, say, the motivation for Heathcliff's shameful treatment of Isabella, or about why Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov unexpectedly chooses to have the body of his saint, Father Zossima, putrefy...

...C A P I T O L I D E A S REPUBLICANS TARNISHED by Tom Bethell Have you ever opened an oven door, not realizing it was on...

...Tommy lives for the moment, sure...

...How many times will we see the American flag...

...Those who occupy these seats will be most welcome in Washington, and they will be invited to all the right parties--provided (as Howard Phillips of the Conservative Caucus has observed) that they are willing to lose gracefully on the issues...

...16.75 cloth, $6.50 paper (plus $1 each shipping) University Press of Order from: America The Media Institute 3017 M St., N.W...

...Yeuoooo brother...

...I hadn't been there for fourteen years...

...Constitutional amendments are legislative initiatives...

...There seem to be very few shops, restaurants, or even people, as far as I could see...

...I felt good about being back in Dallas after so many years...

...I asked one prominent-looking member o'f the delegation whom he would support for the nomination in 1988...

...It is about a mile square, and it seems to consist of about fifty skyscrapers set down in the midst of a great deal of Allright parking...

...1 7 6 . . . . ~ 1 7 6 . . . . * . . . . . _9 . . . . . . * . . . . . . . . . CAPITOL IDEAS (continued from page 11) turned out to be 2,000 people at the Circle T Ranch...

...The best moment of the convention came at the very end, when Ray Charles sang "America the Beautiful" and everyone joined in...

...Bush and his managers are merely the executors of an agenda set by others--and the truth is that they would prefer these "others" to be moderate Democrats rather than conservative Republicans...

...Let me baptize you...

...She might have...

...There (continued on page 43) THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1984 11 MacAllister Christmas, either, an omission that demands explanation...

...I got the spirit today," he said more quietly to himself, wiping his lips...

...Everyone was writing about the ERA as though it were a live issue, she said...

...more than Confirms one's suspicions that the Left today has no arguments to offer, only catcalls and ridicule...

...A voter registration table was set up outside the church, and in a window I saw a sign saying "Reagan Bible Class," whatever that might be...

...Mercedes and Lincolns, well-watered pasture, white picket fences, and everyone milling about out of doors with open-air booths and kitchens serving Mexican-style hors d'oeuvres on china plates and cocktails in great chunky glasses--no plastic or paper ~ here, folks...

...On the first day I went to hear Jeane Kirkpatrick speak...

...The ACORN protestors were encamped in the Trinity River bottoms, near Dealey Plaza...

...Ellen Goodman...

...They would be foolish not to...

...Is it normally this hot in August...

...fanatics who were not content just to watch the play from the front rows, but who actually wanted to rewrite it and direct it...

...Texas is more formal than one might think...

...Downtown Dallas is a bit of a mystery to me...

...Does the Left know this...

...She ceases being a goddess, true...

...I'm sure that Roger Mudd, Dan Rather & Co...

...Outside the front door of the luxury store there stood an assortment of amateur preachers and winos, nearly all black...

...Somewhere north of Fort Worth, it seemed to be...

...That's what it was like to open your hotel door in Dallas...

...We all know that Reagan's has been better, and it is superfluous to hammer away at the point...

...A great wave of heat hits you in the face, and you beat a hasty retreat...

...The TV networks in particular seemed blatantly ideologized, commenting endlessly on how "right wing" the GOP platform was...

...There has been tremendous growth in the suburbs, especially to the north along the LBJ Freeway, where a whole new city seemgd to be under instantaneous construction...

...It was quite a sight to see, by the light of the setting sun...

...One is reminded of Senator Dole's cynical comment that the GOP platform (supposedly so conservative, but actually less so than in 1980, according to Howard Phillips), would be "forgotten in five minutes...

...The paper today plays host to an unappetizing jeering squad of left-wing columnists (Molly Ivins, ringleader), who are somehow persuaded that biting the hand that feeds you is an infallible sign of enlightenment...

...So it was very nice being an important cog in the machinery of government, and an honored dignitary to b o o t . . , part of our twoparty system and please pass the p o r t . . , when, my God, along come these very threatening people who won't accept the terms of the agreement...

...In fact polling data clearly indicate that the majority of American young people remained quite square...

...The tears were rolling down my cheeks...