Reviving Republican Liberalism
GILDER, GEORGE F.
THE GOP STAKES IN NOVEMBER Reviving Republican Liberalism By George F Gilder The year 1966 may well prove the most promising for progressive Republicans since they elected Dwight D. Eisenhower in...
...Although Senatorial Republican liberalism has long been considered an anomaly, it has been extraordinarily tenacious...
...Agnew has won the endorsements of both the Americans for Democratic Action and the AFL-CIO'S Committee on Political Education...
...Also awaited eagerly by progressives are Robert A. Taft Jr., defeated narrowly by Stephen Young in a '64 Senate bid and now conducting a militantly progressive campaign in Cincinnati...
...But the situation in New York is comparable, and there are perhaps 20 other states-including some in the South-where the leading Republicans have eschewed Rightist fixations and are competing successfully with both liberal and conservative Democrats...
...But their numbers are not likely to greatly increase until liberals assume active leadership positions in the Senate and on the National Committee, and until they nominate a progressive Presidential nominee...
...and it would lose a growing opportunity, already widely exploited on the local level, to compete with the Democrats in appealing to the increasingly affluent and educated majority...
...Robert Griffin is clinging precariously to Michigan Governor George Romney's coattails...
...Since congressmen have more difficulty than senators and governors in distinguishing themselves from the national party image and leadership, Republicans have had trouble overcoming the prevalent Democratic registration advantages in urban Congressional districts...
...The progressive Republicans, on the other hand, are extremely unlikely to suffer incumbent losses...
...And if they become a vanguard of pragmatic liberalism in the Senate, the campaigns in '68 and '72 could be more lively than anticipated...
...The conservatives managed to lose so many inveterately Republican seats in 1964, however, that they can hardly help making substantial numerical gains this year -perhaps as many as 28 of the 38 solidly Republican seats they lost solely because of their hero's candidacy...
...The progressives even have a promising candidate in New Mexico...
...David T. Cargo, a 37 year old Albuquerque lawyer who upset a Right-winger in the primaries, is given a good chance against Thomas E. Lusk, despite a nearly 3-1 Democratic registration advantage...
...Oregon Governor Mark Hatfield is reported to have pulled ahead of Representative Robert Duncan...
...Particularly in the urban Northeast, but also in many localities in the South and elsewhere, the Republicans are often as effectively liberal, as expansive in their interpretation of the responsibilities of government and solicitous of individual rights, as their Democratic counterparts...
...Massachusetts Attorney General Edward W. Brooke, facing an apparent white backlash for the first time in his career, retains a narrow margin over former Governor Endicott Peabody...
...Republican liberalism will acquire new authority across the country...
...The primary defeat of its chairman, Idaho Governor Robert Smylie, and the prospective victory of Ronald Reagan in California, represent major setbacks, but the progressives will keep a comfortable majority, containing all the ablest large-state GOP governors...
...Senator John Tower of Texas is embroiled in a close race with Waggoner Carr, a conservative Attorney General expected to edge in on the capacious coattails of Governor John Connally...
...Hicks' probable race for Mayor in 1968 may give the Republicans an opportunity in Boston to forge a coalition similar to the one John Lindsay created in New York City in 1965...
...Today many of the most secure Republican Senate seats are held by progressives, whereas formerly unchallengeable Midwestern conservatives are losing their grip...
...The liberal Republicans who do manage to win under these adverse conditions are among the most able legislators in the House...
...The other threatened Right-wing seat is in Wyoming, where Milward Simpson is retiring and lackluster Governor Clifford P. Hansen is faltering before the challenge of the state's one Congressman, Teno Roncalio, a Bobby Kennedy Democrat elected at large in a 1964 upset...
...Robert Forsythe, Minnesota's young GOP state chairman, is giving spirited chase to Democratic Senator Walter Mondale...
...At the very least...
...There is no doubt that a Nelson Rockefeller defeat and a Reagan victory, coupled with wins by other new conservatives like Paul Laxalt in Nevada and Bo Callaway in Georgia, would prevent the Governors Association from acting as decisively for moderate causes as it has on past occasions, particularly in the case of civil rights...
...The Massachusetts case is admittedly exceptional in that the Republican party there is decisively more liberal than the Democratic...
...Both were active members of the liberal Wednesday Club, and Schwengel, a strong home-rule advocate as one of the few Northern members of the District of Columbia Committee, was also the leading GOP historian in Congress...
...Although there is little recognition of the fact at GOP national headquarters, in a good number of states the question is not whether the Republican party will be saved from the extreme Right, but whether it will save the states from Democratic conservatism or enervated liberalism...
...Meanwhile, liberal Senators John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky, Clifford Case of New Jersey, Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania, Jacob Javits of New York, George Aiken of Vermont, Margaret Chase Smith of Maine, and Minority Whip Thomas Kuchel of California have in general been increasing their margins in each election...
...Progressives have overwhelmingly dominated the Republican Gov ernors Association since its inception and little change is expected...
...Tower will be aided by liberal defections from Carr, but Connally's prospective landslide and his party's massive registration advantage should suffice for the Democrats...
...Now the Republican progressives appear on the verge of establishing a new beachhead in Washington...
...Aside from Senator Curtis, challenged by popular Democratic Governor Frank B. Morrison, two other incumbent Goldwaterites are in jeopardy...
...In 1966, progressive House Republicans hope to improve their position at least qualitatively, by the election of a few promising newcomers and the return of several former associates defeated in the Goldwater landslide...
...It probably could endure once again Richard Nixon, and even the transmigration to politics-in the person of Governor Reagan- of the Late Late Show...
...Besides retaining their decisive majority among the governors and expanding their paltry but vivacious minority of Congressmen, the progressives are likely, for the first time, to gain a controlling majority of GOP Senators...
...Moreover, they have impressive new entrants in Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Oregon, and even Virginia-all of them much younger than the mean of Senate conservatives...
...And while progressive Republicans are finding their party constituencies increasingly hospitable to their views, liberal Democrats are encountering new resistance, particularly on civil rights and civil liberties...
...Many of these races, of course, are so close as to be unpredictable, but if only three of the GOP progressives win and one conservative loses, the progressives will be able to elect one of their own -perhaps Hugh Scott-to succeed retiring Senator Leverett Saltonstall as chairman of the Republican Conference...
...Despite the re-emerging backlash, despite California's antic determination to elect Ronald Reagan, despite the supposed rise of wartime chauvinism and the conservative resentments allegedly simmering in America's cankered cities and suburbs, next month's elections could revive and accelerate the liberal trend so rudely interrupted in 1964...
...In the House of Representatives, where the Republicans hold only 140 seats, less than a third of the total, the progressives in turn occupy approximately 40, less than a third of the GOP total...
...The Right-wing will not gain any such distinguished names, will lose most of its Goldwater coattailers from Alabama and Mississippi, and may even wind up without its dynamic HUAC picador John Ashbrook of Ohio, the victim of insidious redistricting...
...Another moderate Republican favored over a racist Democrat is Spiro T. Agnew in Maryland, now diligently organizing in the Negro wards of Baltimore where Republican Mayor Theodore Roosevelt McKeldin scores well...
...A recent poll by Louis Harris has shown that the more affluent and better educated Americans, dominantly Republican, are overwhelmingly more liberal on such issues as open housing and anti-war protests than the impoverished, who remain overwhelmingly Democratic in registration...
...If they do-during this period of flagging Democratic liberalism in the Senate, symbolized by the public alarms from Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, Whip Russell Long, and key liberal spokesman John O. Pastore that Southern desegregation is proceeding too quickly-the Republicans may at last become a creative Senatorial opposition, and ultimately elect a liberal Republican Minority Leader...
...They should also be able to exert much greater pressure on the aging and flexible Dirksen...
...But the national party would be consigned to permanent minority status...
...In the long run, much depends on the Republican Presidential nominee in '68...
...The prospective change in the balance of power among Senate Republicans is not an accident...
...Since Rockefeller carried 65 per cent of the voters under 35 in his '64 bid to oust Faubus, his victory should establish him for a long time to come as a symbol of the potentialities of Republican moderation and money in the South...
...Yet even if he loses there will probably be a Rockefeller at future Governors Conferences...
...These various state and local successes have been ignored by the party on the national level during a decade of steady decline...
...Republican Policy Committee Chairman Bourke B. Hickenlooper of Iowa and Minority Leader Everett McKinley Dirksen were seriously threatened in their last races, and Nebraska Goldwaterite Carl Curtis is in danger now...
...and William O. Cowger of Kentucky, who as Mayor of Louisville enacted the first public accommodations law anywhere in the South...
...Bay State Democrats, in contrast, face a party constituency dominated by Bostonians who voted 80 per cent for Louise Day Hicks, segregationist school committee chairman...
...In Illinois, Charles W. Percy is currently given a slight edge over veteran liberal Paul Douglas...
...THE GOP STAKES IN NOVEMBER Reviving Republican Liberalism By George F Gilder The year 1966 may well prove the most promising for progressive Republicans since they elected Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952...
...True, GOP liberalism has survived Goldwater, the white backlash, and LBJ rampant, and then two years later expanded its realms...
...There the Republicans-led by Governor John Volpe, Lieutenant Governor Elliot Richardson, Attorney General Brooke, and the delegation in the State Legislature-overcame strong Democratic opposition to pass the nation's first law against de facto segregation...
...Among the Goldwater victims expected back are Abner Sibal of Connecticut and Fred Schwengel of Iowa...
...Nevertheless, the leading Republican governors, except for Reagan, will remain moderates and will dominate the organization...
...Nelson Rockefeller is the only progressive incumbent in serious trouble...
...His brother Winthrop is running well in Arkansas against a White Citizens Council Democrat, James D. ("No Relation and Don't You Forget It") Johnson, who defeated a more moderate segregationist supported by retiring governor Orvil Faubus in the primary...
...With half of American high school graduates now attending college and in percentage and number rapidly increasing, the political significance of the Harris discoveries is especially great...
...and Lawrence Traylor in Virginia, who recently received the endorsement of one of the state's leading Negro organizations, is said to have a long-shot chance in the three-way race involving Harry F. Byrd Jr., and a Conservative party candidate...
...The Republicans on the state's Congressional delegation- all of whom dissociated themselves from Goldwater in '64-are led by Congressmen F. Bradford Morse and Silvio Conte, both more liberal than any of the state's Democratic delegation on such issues as civil rights and foreign aid...
...One state in which this demographic change is already evident is Massachusetts...
Vol. 49 • October 1966 • No. 21
