Letter From a Whig
Slemp, Bascom C.
November and Beyond (WASHINGTON)-The bumbling anti-professionalism of George McGovern's campaign organization since the Democratic convention makes the re-election of Richard Nixon a virtual...
...Therefore, perhaps we can afford to take a few minutes to look beyond November: to ask ourselves what effect the developments of 1972 will have on the American political landscape in the years ahead...
...His substantive program won him the support-or at least the toleration-of the liberals within the party while his rhetoric made it difficult for conservatives to oppose him...
...In the process of nominating Senator Goldwater, Republican conservatives that year also managed to gain control of their party's machinery and refused to give it up even in the face of a massive electoral defeat...
...If they are represented at the next Democrat convention it will be on their opponent's terms-not theirs...
...He did it by giving the conservatives the rhetoric while moving program-matically to the left...
...Television viewers may have been bored by this year's conventions, but 1976 promises action that few will want to miss...
...Today there are liberal republicans and conservative republicans but most of these and many others must first be described as "Nixon" Republicans...
...The trouble will begin when someone else steps forward to say, "Let me do these things...
...They may by right about McGovern, but if they really think they're going to be back in the saddle themselves by 1976 they are only deluding themselves...
...The McGovernites- with or without George McGovern-are likely to be with us for some time...
...The Percy supported delegates allocation plan was defeated in committee and smashed on the convention floor by a vote of 910 to 434...
...And lose they did...
...They assumed that their party would "come to its senses" after a major defeat and admit that they, rather than the ideologues, should be in control...
...They may be more sophisticated by 1976, but they will be as radical as ever...
...November and Beyond (WASHINGTON)-The bumbling anti-professionalism of George McGovern's campaign organization since the Democratic convention makes the re-election of Richard Nixon a virtual certainty...
...The party is united now behind Richard Nixon, but one has to wonder what will happen as party workers begin looking toward 1976...
...Thus, many of them will allow Nixon as president to do things no one else could have gotten away with...
...That he got away with it is amazing enough in itself and attests to his political ability...
...At any rate, it can be safely predicted that the McGovernites will remain in control...
...The future of the Republican party is less clear for several reasons...
...The smaller, traditionally Republican states will continue to play a major role in the candidate selection process and will force potential con-didates to at least make an attempt to satisfy party conservatives...
...The Senator and his people have made just about every imaginable mistake and are going to have to pay the price in November...
...They handed the nomination to Richard Nixon in 1968 and wiil swallow his programmatic liberalism so long as he clothes it in the rhetoric of the right, but in their heart they are as conservative as ever-a fact made "perfectly clear" to all attending this year's GOP convention...
...They were wrong, of course, for true believers are not prone to give up after one defeat...
...There is some evidence to suggest that he may be moving to the right in preparation for his second term, but the evidence cannot be considered conclusive in light of his penchant for surprise and breaks with tradition...
...But this election will signal at least the beginning of the end of the Nixon era-an era that has spanned more than twenty years...
...He has combined liberalism and conservatism in a unique synthesis that has won the support of the Javitses of his party without losing the Goldwaters or party workers at the local level...
...In this sense, he is unique and essentially irreplaceable...
...Liberals, for example, have already surfaced a potential condidate in Illinois Senator Charles Percy who, along with Senators Packwood and Mathias, went to Miami this summer to help the Ripon Society "reform" the old GOP...
...Meany should consider what happened to the Republican party in 1964...
...Richard Nixon may be able to sell them FAP, SALT and deficit financing, but that does not mean anyone else will be able to...
...The Republican moderates made the same mistake in 1964 that the Democratic "traditionalists" are making today...
...The futility of the McCloskey and Ashbrook attacks on his policies are evidence of the success of the President's domestic political strategy...
...So Meany and his friends are not going to be welcomed back as prophets who turned out to be right...
...Republicans have convened in convention six times since Richard Nixon emerged as a national figure and at five of these conventions they have nominated him for one or the other of the nation's two highest offices...
...George Meany and his friends appear to believe that when it's all over the Democratic party will be returned to them intact, that the nightmare will be over and they will be able to pick up where they left off...
...The outcome guaranteed that the next GOP convention will be similar in makeup to the one that met in Miami this summer...
...The struggle in 1976 will be between those Republicans who admire Nixon for what he says and those who admire him for what he has done...
...This unity will necessarily disappear after this election or at least prior to the end of the President's second term...
...They may come up with a candidate more cosmetically attractive next time, but if necessary they can be expected to be as brutally successful in their next convention as they were this time...
...They are comfortable with him-they trust him...
...This then is the shape of things to come as now perceived by observers in Washington...
...It will disappear because only he could have imposed it on ordinarily divided and unreconcilable factions within the GOP...
...One McGovernite congressman has gone so far as to suggest that a quota be set up that will give "traditional" Democrats some representation in 1976, a suggestion that puts Meany in essentially the same box with racial and sexual special interests groups entitled to proportional, but essentially token representation...
...It is impossible to say at this point which side the President himself might favor in such a struggle...
...They still control it today and insist on their due...
...The reforms they propose were consciously or unconsciously designed to weaken the power of party professions at the next convention and to shift power away from traditionally Republican areas to the larger states and the liberal northeast...
...Percy, Packwood and Mathias could not even carry their own states when the issue finally reached the floor...
...Percy arrived in Miami as the chief reformer, leaving no doubt that if the reform could be pushed through liberals might offset the inherent conservatism of his party and help him personally, but backed off when it became obvious that they were going to lose...
...It will be a liberal-conservative struggle for the soul of what, by then, may be the majority party in this country...
...Neither liberals nor conservatives seem to be waiting for word from the White House, however, as both sides appear to be preparing for the struggle they know must precede the next convention...
...Thus, they are sitting this one out in the expectation that a defeated George McGovern will disappear into the Senate o'er the hills of South Dakota...
...Their party has been seized by ideological hardliners who are not about to surrender it without a fight...
Vol. 6 • October 1972 • No. 1
