AFTER THE SHOUTING

Spear, Lois

NORTH CAROLINA REPORT AFTER THE SHOUTING Television viewers caught a brief but fascinating glimpse of North Carolina politics at the Republican National Convention in Kansas City last month. Three...

...When Reagan tarnished his record by choosing a liberal running mate, ideologues in the party directed their attention to Senator James Buckley of New York, for in addition to his consistently conservative position, Buckley also possessed clean-cut good looks and an eloquent style...
...lois spear (Sister Lois Spear, O.P.., teaches in the History Department of St...
...Though in each instance, broader-based attitudes asserted themselves in subsequent letters to the editor, the above comments indicate that Ellis is not a one-of-a-kind phenomenon limited to the clientele of the lesser-developed Piedmont and mountain areas in the western part of our state...
...campaign manager, Governor James Holshouser, be scrapped...
...The open forum provided by The North Carolina Catho-lie should help to blunt extreme positions, giving the moderates a chance to expose simplistic, single-issue thinking...
...After duly casting his uncommitted vote, Shaw was surprised to hear Ellis announce the delegation's tally: 29 Reagan, 25 Ford...
...One reader commented, "Sister is teaching her own brand of history to others . . . [She] should read Solzhenitsyn . . ." He cited in his letter several issues of Dr...
...should remember that among the less-traveled roads in our state, one still can find signs saying, "Fight Integration and Communism," and "This Is Klan Country...
...He demanded, instead, that the convention approve a hand-picked list pledged, after duly voting for Ford on the first ballot, to switch to Reagan in the later balloting...
...Remembering the bruising politics used to gain control of all 54 N.C...
...The newly created Office of Peace and Justice may provide needed channels of communication between local perceptions of issues and information on how the larger society views them...
...Helms adamantly refused...
...Augustine College in Raleigh...
...When the state convention met in June, however, the eminence grise behind the Reagan forces, Senator Helms, insisted that the list of 25 delegates proposed by Ford's N.C...
...With Helms exerting tight control, all Thomas F. Ellis, state manager of Reagan's campaign, had to do was carry out orders...
...epitomized the conservative defense of the military posture of the U.S...
...Robert Shaw, the state Republican chairman who considered himself the one uncommitted delegate, found out how literally Ellis carried out orders...
...The kind of thinking they represent is not limited to one political party, for the Republican Helms won his Senate seat despite the overwhelmingly Democratic composition of the state's voter registration lists...
...To keep the delegation in line, forcing it to accept Ford with a show of unanimity when the command came down from above required Ellis to use a short rein...
...In the absence of a selective sampling of voter choices, it may be worthwhile to study the pattern of preference of one segment of the population generally considered Democratic: the tiny Catholic population with its weekly organ, The North Carolina Catholic...
...After the rejection of the Ford delegate list, Holshouser, who is popular among Republicans for winning control of the governor's mansion for the first time in over seventy years, came to the convention, hat-in-hand, requesting a place for himself in the N.C...
...He was compelled to work late every night of the convention, his voice becoming hoarse and raspy in the process...
...It clarifies the last-ditch attempt to gain delegate support in his seconding speech for Reagan...
...As a further fillip to the conservative wing of the party, Helms uses any means at hand to get his candidate nominated, as the state's Republican Convention strikingly illustrates...
...Tom Ellis standing on a chair and croaking hoarsely to delegates in the early morning hours of August 19, "This is a railroad...
...The sidelines observer is apt to wonder how many Ellis' and Helms' North Carolina possesses...
...The publication leans toward single-issue politics, with anti-abortion literature drawing strong support both from the editorial board and from letter-writers...
...The question, "Are we willing to give away the Panama Canal...
...Like one of those puzzles made up of several boxes designed to fit neatly inside each other, the boxes ranged from Buckley on the national scene down to Helms and Ellis on the state level...
...and also foreshadowed the decision, announced in the News and Observer on August 25, that after 1976, Helms would no longer be a Republican...
...the only sop he was willing to extend to the Holshouser forces was his own decision not to seek a delegate position...
...Three other subjects aroused a flurry of responses: homosexuality, transcendental meditation, Communism...
...The paper serves both the Raleigh and Charlotte dioceses, but the issues most deeply agitating its readers come from the Raleigh diocese where the iron rule of the late Bishop Vincent Waters has been replaced by that of the moderate, Bishop Joseph Gossman...
...One reader noted disapprovingly that in a photo of the group meeting to discuss the issue of homosexuality, Father was not wearing clerical attire and had his arm placed affectionately on the shoulders of one of the participants...
...On the national level, with Wallace out of the running, it was natural for North Carolina's conservative Republican voters to endorse Reagan, standing as he did for such good old American values as remaining No...
...Fred Schwarz's Christian Anti-Communism Crusade...
...Three scenes stand out: the scuffle between Rockefeller and Rocky Mount delegate Jack Bailey over possession of a "This is Reagan Country" sign...
...They showed, for example, that although George Wood, the only candidate opposing the death penalty, was defeated for the Democratic nomination for governor, the candidate for lieutenant governor, Howard N. Lee, the Black mayor who served with distinction in Chapel Hill, had gained a slim lead over Jimmy Green, assuring himself a place in the September 14 run-off election...
...Transcendental meditation, according to some readers, is a dangerous novelty undermining the saying of the Rosary and other "approved" devotions...
...On the state level, Jesse A. Helms, though less polished than Buckley, does have impeccable credentials for the ideological conservatism currently in vogue...
...They might ponder further that the loud "no" in response to Helms's question came, not only from the 54 North Carolina delegates, but from other states as well...
...On August 1, after the close of the Democratic Convention, Salmagundi lamented, "Chavis [Cesar E. Chavez], the Veteran and the Draft Dodger were given an audible hearing, but anti-abortion?-Forget it...
...The most strongly worded letters condemned any softening of attitudes toward homosexuals and castigated the Greenville priest who supported such a ministry...
...1 militarily, advocating turn-of-the-century morality, and getting the chiselers off welfare...
...Questioned about the discrepancy, Shaw observed of Ellis, "He can say anything he wants...
...The Catholic community shows signs of change, also...
...On the state level, there are signs that voters increasingly are rejecting narrow ideological positions identified with Helms and Ellis...
...Jesse Helms in his seconding speech for Reagan's nomination bitterly advising the convention to follow Sol-zhenitsyn's warning and "place our trust in God, not politicians...
...He opposes prison reform, reduction of military spending, unionization, food stamp programs, and all manner of "liberal" measures...
...Though not requiring a list of potential delegates, North Carolina's preferential primary, at considerable expense to its citizens, does determine how votes must be cast at the National Convention...
...Anyone who has anything good to say about Russians or communists is a threat to the community and country...
...delegation...
...As a result of the primary, Reagan captured 28 votes, followed by Ford with 25, and one uncommitted...
...Viewers shocked at hearing Helms demand of the convention delegates, "Do Americans want a National Defense System that falls short of being No...
...The state primary returns were being flashed on the screen while the Republican Convention still was in progress...
...These scenes, unrelated though they may have seemed to television viewers north of the Mason-Dixon Line, were closely intertwined...
...delegates could hardly assuage Helms's bitterness over Reagan's defeat...
...1 in the world...

Vol. 103 • September 1976 • No. 20


 
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