The Liberal Republican Delusion
PODELL, BERTRAM
A PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRATIC VIEW The Liberal Republican Delusion by BERTRAM L POELL There is a constant, shrill cry emanating from the increasingly isolated "progressive"-or if you like, "liberal"...
...No amount of logic twisting can alter the facts...
...A modest projection of upcoming elections below the Mason-Dixon Line should prove equally illuminating to members of the Ripon Society...
...their battle was lost long ago...
...Labor has not forgotten the Landrum-Griffin Act...
...They even believe, as George F. Gilder recently informed us in these pages ("The Emperor's New Majority," NL, October 13), "that gop control of Congress (especially if accompanied by gains in the South) would permit the liberal Democrats at last to take effective control of their own congressional party...
...Yet they claim that a gop Congress would do better justice to nationally beneficial legislation...
...A PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRATIC VIEW The Liberal Republican Delusion by BERTRAM L POELL There is a constant, shrill cry emanating from the increasingly isolated "progressive"-or if you like, "liberal" -republicans that tries to magnify their tiny triumphs into great victories...
...Its lyrics tell of an end to desegregation efforts, annihilation of the Office of Economic Opportunity (oeo) and the Job Corps, the hamstringing of Model Cities, and continuance of Federal programs and benefits favoring the South...
...In fact, we are witnessing the beginnings of a major political shift...
...Old Senate conservatives, on the other hand, are being joined by a younger crop...
...Roman Hruska and Carl Curtis, both of Nebraska, Judiciary and Finance, respectively...
...As I see it, only one option remains open to them: joining the Democrats...
...Senator Thurmond, a recent convert to Republicanism, rates far more power, choice committee assignments and Presidential attention than does, say, life-long liberal Jacob Javits of New York...
...Some-like Henry Bellmon (Oklahoma), Edward Gurney (Florida) and Howard Baker (Tennessee)-are drawn from the very areas where Republicanism has lately found new strength...
...In Florida, Senator Spessard Holland, an aging conservative, is quietly engaged in smoothing a path to his seat in 1970 for reactionary William Cramer...
...The list is long and sad...
...They shout directions to depleted ranks...
...conceptions of supreme justice on the Federal bench...
...Another is Harry Dent, once right-hand man to South Carolina's Senator Strom Thurmond and today a White House Deputy Counsel...
...Last year, even as the turmoil raged in Chicago at the National Convention, Democrats seated the Mississippi Freedom Democratic party led by Charles Evers, while showing Lester Maddox the door...
...It might be enlightening for self-deluded Ripon Society types to take a closer look at senior, ranking House Republicans, for these men would presumably chair their respective committees...
...Senators Clifford Case (New Jersey), John Sherman Cooper (Kentucky) and Margaret Chase Smith (Maine), among others, carry the barest ideological weight...
...Wallace Bennett of Utah, Banking and Currency (sponsor of the Senate proposal to repeal required registration of ammunition sales...
...Human rights was the first casualty?civil liberties are now under assault...
...Throughout the old "Solid South," traditionally conservative, unreconstructed segregationists are pouring into the Republican ranks...
...Nevertheless, the ground is relentlessly being cut from under them...
...One-man, one-vote reapportionment and the expansion of the Southern gop are hastening this process of change in the House...
...The aging coterie of Eastern moderate Republicans finds itself increasingly frustrated by the growing decisiveness with which the White House ignores their long-advocated principles...
...Frank Bow of Ohio on Appropriations...
...Robert Pack-wood, considered a borderline moderate, gave a clear indication of his future political behavior with his decisive pro-abm vote...
...Additional proof is the rising number of Democrats-turned-Republi-can who are being appointed by the President to critical government positions...
...To hear their refrain, every day in every way they are emerging from the political wilderness and taking over real power within the gop...
...Nor-ris Cotton of New Hampshire, Commerce...
...A cursory look at new Southern faces in both parties yields interesting conclusions...
...while traditional gop bastions have contributed such party stalwarts as Robert Dole (Kansas), Ralph Smith (Illinois), and Clifford Hansen (Wyoming...
...Only New York's Charles Goodell, initiator of instant liberalism, rates lower on the Nixon scale of Republican Senatorial Importance...
...One such is Phillip Campbell, formerly Georgia's Commissioner of Agriculture...
...Here we have a true concentra-tration of liberals, complete with the finest credentials...
...And Gordon Al-lott of Colorado, Interior...
...for the party is painfully and definitely cleaning its own house...
...Outside the South, especially since Ohio Senator Frank Lausche's 1968 primary defeat, no Democrat dares run for major Federal office as a rank conservative or reactionary...
...Leslie Arends of Illinois on Armed Services...
...A bitter foe of the Wholesome Meat Act of 1967, he is now the Assistant Secretary of Agriculture responsible for its enforcement...
...All this it not to deny that conservatives aplenty abound in Democratic ranks...
...By these acts, the President is abandoning the liberal constituency that has up to now been the backbone of the Ripon Society, whose ideological predilections are diametrically opposed to the entire new Republican thrust...
...conservation and environmental quality have lost all meaning...
...These contentions are pure delusion, nothing but prime fantasy material, and require a swift refutation in the interest of offering a clearer view of the newly evolving political choices that face thoughtful Americans...
...Where is his Ripon membership...
...Meanwhile, defecting Democrats are causing an inexorable drift toward their brand of conservatism in the Rpuiblican party they are embracing so eagerly, and gop progressives in Congress watch helplessly as their already minimal power is diminished still further...
...Their legions have melted away...
...Clearly, however conservative some Democrats may be, Republican thinking-from official pronouncements to governmental and congressional policies-reflects an even greater intransigence...
...Progressive Republicans remind me of the captain of a sinking vessel, still spewing out commands to a crew that has already gone overboard...
...Where, then, is the clout of the liberal Republicans...
...Democratic Senator Albert Gore of Tennessee has been put in desperate straits by a major challenge from ultraconserva-tive Republican Representative Bill Brock...
...mass transit for cities lags behind Supersonic Transports, and the entire concept of urban aid has been ignored...
...Ross Adair of Indiana on Foreign Affairs...
...Some of these gentlemen even believe that socialism was born when Christ divided up the loaves and fishes...
...Worst of all, though, is calling Robert Griffin, the new "Whip, a progressive...
...Cam-pare them with these harsh conservatives of relatively tender years, Wilmer Mizell (North Carolina), Louis Frey (Florida), John Buchanan (Alabama), Fletcher Thompson (Georgia), and William Scott (Virginia...
...In the Senate, a similar picture prevails...
...Funds for education, libraries, hospitals, medical research, clean water, and so many other ongoing programs have been mercilessly eviscerated...
...They are on the defensive at all times, as death takes its toll and their power base back home erodes...
...And of course, such latter-day gop Senators as Charles Percy of Illinois and Edward Brooke of Massachusetts sit well below the political salt...
...Under the present Adiministration, consumer programs lie abandoned...
...President Nixon, the Confederate flag bravely fluttering at his right hand, stands expectantly beneath the Southern balcony, plucking the zither of patronage and preference, and cooing his new love song...
...Thus, Milton Young of North Dakota, Appropriations...
...Karl Mundt of South Dakota, Government Operations...
...Clement Haynsworth's nomination to the High Court, not to mention Nixon's determination to have it confirmed in the face of mounting opposition, is merely one more indication that the President welcomes the chance of posing as a hero to the South, as defender of its Bertram L. Podell, a new contributor, is Democratic Congressman from New York's 13th District...
...And everywhere, the newcomers are welcomed with enthusiasm and tangible rewards by the gop power structure, acting with the approval and encouragement of the Nixon Administration...
...To prance around waiving Nixon's feeble attempt at "progressive" legislation is sophistry of the first order, as is the claim that Hugh Scott's elevation to Senate Minority Leader heralds a gop liberal millen-ium...
...For persisting in this wishful thinking can only delay the inevitable, yet long overdue liberal-conservative realignment being forced by the steady takeover of the Republican party by the Right...
...Moreover, their once fruitful alliance with elderly ethnic Northerners is almost at an end, for these members too are rapidly retiring...
...Elements of racism may on occasion enter into urban politics today, but they are a temporary aberration rather than a new Democratic direction...
...The same is true of the Border states...
...The Southern committee chairmen in the House are a dwindling group of aging reactionaries whose dictatorial actions and ideology are creating a tidal wave of opposition among Democratic congressional liberals...
...The Administration's placatory attitude-an enticement to hesitators remaining in the Democratic fold-Is underscored by the continued resignations from the Department of Justice of dedicated civil rights lawyers, and the assignment of government textile contracts to mills known to be antiunion and anti-Negro...
...Almost all the Democrats are at least moderates, like David Pryor (Arkansas) and Nick Galifianakis (North Carolina...
...Representative Page Belcher of Oklahoma ranks on Agriculture...
...Finally, if a senatorial election were held today in North Carolina, a gop victory would be at least a 50-50 possibility...
...In the light of these trends, how any liberal Republican can proclaim triumph is beyond all reason...
...John Byrnes of Wisconsin on Ways and Means...
...There is a steady stream of announcements proclaiming new defections, the most recent being in North Carolina, Louisiana and Virginia...
...William Cramer of Florida on Public Works...
...Conservative Republicans in Virginia, meanwhile, are ardently wooing Senator Harry Byrd, in the hope that he will cross the aisle as Thurmond did...
Vol. 52 • November 1969 • No. 21
