What the Republican Party Means To Me

...Most of the Republican efforts to build support have, consciously or not, worked from the same assumption-that people will join the party because it’s nice, friendly, up-to-date...

...In many ways, the party’s “heritage division,” which oversees 32 different varieties of auxiliary groups, acts as if it were still back in the 1950s...

...To avoid some of the worst hazards and still satisfy their need for warm bodies, the Republicans are trying to follow their pollsters’ advice to concentrate on the under-35 crowd...

...She’s devising programs that she believes will arouse intense interest...

...They might be better off assigning a greater priority to registration drives in nursing homes...

...If there is any logic at all to the Republicans’ eager new registration drives, it may lie in the frail hope that the new voter will be grateful to the party for helping him register and remember it fondly the first time he votes...

...Her approach tells something about how the party got in its current fix and why it’s having such trouble recovering, for there is a vacuousness to these appeals that suggests that party leaders are not quite sure what-if anything-the GOP should stand for...

...Traditiqnally, they’ve prayed for low voter turnouts, banking on their stalwarts’ higher level of participation...

...Buckley, eyebrows arching, began telling his audience how Wallace was only masquerading as a conservative by listing the public projects sponsored by Wallace as governor of Alabama...

...It is not an impossible task, despite current difficulties...

...The GOP’s continuing difficulties with these groups are symbolized by the heritage division’s inability to come up with more than six ethnics, among all the Beards, Browns, Cranes, Johnsons, Millers, an.d Robinsons who comprise the Republicans’ congressional contingent...

...The anti-bureaucratic theme, popularized by George Wallace (“I’ll take them point y-headed bureaucrats and throw their briefcases in the Potomac ”), has the kind of substance that other social issues lack...

...The listeners at these meetings wear buttons that say, “We’re out to win...

...Ed Fuelner, the executive director of the conservative House Republican Study Committee, says, “I come from the suburbs of Chicago and the last thng I’d want to do is register voters...

...Vice President Rockefeller told delegates to a Washington leadership conference, “I don’t want to see one party of the right and one of the left...

...There are more ethnic Democrats than that from New York alone...

...Issues like these are apt to drive a wedge between those, like Reagan, who really do hate the welfare mothers, and that much larger group which is concerned about wasteful government expenditures, but which is scared by the bitter right-wing tone...

...We can’t just shoot from the hip...

...There was no talk about issues or party philosophy, just man-in-thestreet interviews about the virtues of a two-party system...

...I remember, for example, a televised confrontation between George Wallace and William F. Buckley in the late 1960s...

...Gaylord himself disproves another myth about Republicans: that they have no sense of humor...

...The social issues, conceived as a way to lure the Archie Bunker/George Wallace constituency, are also unlikely to transcend the fundamental economic differences between “populists” and rightwingers...

...The RNC’s ranlung black official, John Wilkes, announces firmly, “We are going to demonstrate a concern for the kinds of problems that the people in the black community have...

...Five years ago these social issues seemed to be the guaranteed route to electoral success, but in the future they seem more likely to divide than include...

...Cathy Bertini is seeking more publicity to highlight the party’s youth-oriented accomplishments...

...RNC’s efforts to attract black Republicans...

...A voter identification and registration drive is planned for late 1975...

...Young staffers are doing their best to play down the party’s “square” image with some groovy turn-ons like an orange poster featuring two dancing elephants, topped by the words, “Get it on...

...There was a nasty side to it which involved a sort of disdain for the starving masses and an uncritical willingness to spend money for defense...

...Again, the emphasis is on emergency image-repair...

...They will target areas where they feel they’ll get the most sympathetic response...

...Although this is clearly not the place to construct a Republican platform, here are a few areas which Republican thinkers might examine...

...Kevin Phillips in his book, Mediacracy makes the point that the welfare bureaucracy-including outside consultants, foundations, and businesses-has a direct stake in preserving the current system of indirect subsidies and social services...

...In the pilot, viewers are promised a chance to see such luminaries as Bart Starr explain why they’re Republicans and to “listen to a lively dialogue between a Republican official and members of the general public...

...It also hurt to learn that most of their fellow Americans considered the party incompetent, corrupt, and uncaring about the problems of the average person, Everything was going against t hem-nix on, Ford, the re cession - but Mary Louise Smith told them: “I am proud to be a Republican, I know you’re proud to be Republicans, millions of Americans are proud to be Republicans, and there’s no need to sulk in the shadow of 1974...

...For example, a black Republican from Maryland told me that his strategy was to “hit hard at the issues...

...One young Republican staff member proudly brandished poll results to disprove this myth...

...There is, of course, something the Republicans might stand up for, and it needn’t be the insensitive, hard-line complaints about welfare mothers and campus radicals that Ronald Reagan built his career on and which Kevin Phillips has been promoting as the “social issues...

...What is forgotten is that, unlike the reform fights in the Democratic Party, much of this activity is of ludicrously small practical importance, since blacks and other minority groups are not beating down the doors to be included in the GOP...

...But he added positively, “We’ll just do what’s right...

...The party might even take a cue from Ronald Reagan, who told a well-publicized gathering of conservatives, “Is it a third party we need, or is it a new and revitalized second party, raising a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors which make it unmistakably clear where we stand on all of the issues troubling the people...

...As they embark into uncharted territories, however, no one at the national committee seems to have a clear idea of what it is they’re selling...

...He says, “We must have a simple conceptwhich I guess the Republican Party has had from the beginning-that good government is the best politics and that is what people go for...

...One thinks of Jesse Jackson and his followers chanting I AM SOMEBODY, the spirit and energy of an oppressed people determined to prove themselves...

...but there is a special lilt in her voice when she tells visitors, “The signs are encouraging...

...Ironically, the party is making a more concerted attempt to get black support than to develop the two demographic areas that many experts consider most promising-blue-collar workers and Southern Democrats...

...All these efforts at verbal uplift seem, in the most grotesque, distorted way, like the early days of the black pride movement...

...House Minority Leader John Rhodes says, “Republicans have a great opportunity to emerge as the party that stands for pragmatism and sound government...

...Conservatives, presumably, would be still permitted to vote for fringe groups as a form of therapeutic self-expression...

...A few are even suggesting a flat rule lifting any regulation that prevents prices from being lowered...

...Fly Me, I’m Republican So at the Republican National Committee, everyone talks about the “nu ts-and-bolts” matters of party politics...

...M a y Republicans are also urging an end to archaic transportation regulations by such agencies as the Civil Aeronautics Board and Interstate Commerce Commission, which keep rates artificially high...

...Suddenly, Wallace scowled and said derisively, “What’s the matter, Mr...

...Ford’s appeal is identical with his personalityhe is good, honest, fair...

...But the emphasis in any Republican Party program should not be how to sell it, but on what is being sold...

...What’s interesting here is that the GOP is going after two types of youth-workingclass and college kids-with lame appeals unlikely to attract either one...

...Bob Ray of Iowa, who is introduced as a man who “has been putting Republican principles to work on the state level-and getting results...

...But we will have an effort .to broaden our base to reach into neighborhoods that have never seen a Republican,” says press officer Bill Royal...

...Mainstream Republicans are fervent in their efforts to avoid any sharp differences with the Democrats...

...The clear implication was to vote Republican in order to prevent the collapse of the party and the beginning of the tyranny of a one-party state...

...Amid all this activity, the only people really concerned about such outdated notions as philosophy or issues are the party’s conservatives, and their ideas for an ideologically distinct party have that special Kamikaze flavor which proved so unsuccessful in 1964...

...Undaunted, the party is pressing ahead with plans to spend a halfmillion dollars on three prime-time TV specials scheduled for airing in May, June, and July-a scaled-down version of a $2-million campaign proposed last year...

...Senator Bill Brock of Tennessee says, “Let’s stand for somethmg...

...The Republicans are trying to be selective about who they get to regster, but in some areas-like black neighborhoods or college campuses-it won’t be easy...

...Late in the fall campaign, the party took to running five-minute commercials aimed at staving off defeat...

...I don’t know if I’m in a position at this point to isolate issues...

...After trying to snare working-class youth with seminars at the YMCA, the Republicans will try to reach out to the campus and the disaffected remnants of the counter-cul t ure...

...Actually, Wilkes and other officials are arguing that the party’s main selling point in Democratic areas is the mere fact that it offers an alternativeand only a pallid one at that...

...For example, she says, “I bet most young people don’t know that Norman Lent, a Republican congressman from New York, has been leading the fight to allow John Lennon to stay in the country...

...Another misconception the Republicans are anxiously trying to dispel is the belief that they are the party of the rich and big business...

...For one thing, they are designed to correct the distorted impression the American public has about Republicans, who, many believe, spend most of their time walking in and out of courtrooms...

...What can I do?’ ” For the shy, tongue-tied Republican, uncomfortable around people with funny accents or strange costumes, Gaylord has some answers...

...MacLeod might be a slightly extreme example, but variants of this strategy command GOP thinking to such a degree these days that many party conservatives are flirting with the idea of a Reaganite third party...

...What the programs sell, of course, is image, image, image...

...I think it’s important that if people believe [in these principles], then they have to believe in the Republican Party...

...This recruiting effort is considered important for the future of the party, but it is being conducted with all the purposeful drive and political awareness of a Girl Scout cookie sale...

...and the ghettos of Chicago because they’ve been taken for granted by the Democrats,” he says...

...But there was also a stalwart belief in free enterprise, an antipathy to federal regulation, and a lingering suspicion of “big government...

...There are threads in traditional Republican thinking which still have a relevance to contemporary problems...

...At the meeting of state chairmen, he got off this rib-tickler: “When some of my associates in Iowa found out I was going to the national committee to direct a program for special voter groups, they likened that to Ted Kennedy opening up a driver education school...

...The RNC has the task of finding three such people who could offset the negative images that many ill-informed Americans have about Republicans...

...The RNC has set up a special voters division under Iowa Republican Joe Gaylord to reach these groups...

...For the rest of the party, the emphasis is now on “telling our story” (the kind of catch.phrase which caused one congressman to lament, “We’ve never been good at slogans”) rather than on deciding where the party should stand...

...For the pilot show, they chose Gov...

...As chairman she is out to rebuild the party-and is placing her faith in an advertising campaign and a voter registration drive...

...Governor Rockefeller tells party leaders, as he gazes out over a luncheon crowd, his heart swelling with emotion, “One can’t help having two feelings, and I am sure we all share them...

...Among them: Modify standards for professional associations to allow for lower fees...

...The blue-collar worker that some conservatives want to bring into the party simply doesn’t have that instinctive, inflexible opposition to “humanitarian” government spending, which is such an important element in Reaganite thinking...

...Join the Republican Party...

...Well,” he admitted, “we may or may not agree with the Democrats...

...On the other hand, the Republicans, Gaylord implies, offer the minority group member a chance to stand out in the crowd as someone special, part of a very select group...

...Mary Louise Smith, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, is no funky soul lady crying, “Say it loud, I’m a Republican and I’m proud...

...After the program titles, there will be a look at recent news events from the Republican point of view, followed by a special film which will present a significant accomplishment by a Republican...

...The division’s coordinator, Colonel John Niemczyk, seriously believes that this kind of appeal will swing the ethnic vote, even though the time is past when Republicans could promise to liberate the Captive Nations...

...So now we know exactly where the Republican Party stands on the vital issues of the day...

...There are legitimate reasons to attack the Democrats for being the captives of the federal workers and the public service unions...

...It’s that kind of conservative attack on the welfare system that could gain votes and lead to fundamental reforms...

...For reasons that have to do with both the preservation of the two-party system and the need for some consistent and continuing critique of the increasing sloppiness of liberal thinking, it is important for the Republicans to make a far more deliberate effort to define their philosophic identity...

...At best, they hope to benefit from “lines of communication” being opened up with such alien beings as blacks, young people, and white ethnics...

...Her priority is working-class youth, the two-thrds of those under 35 who have never been to college...

...We’re rallying the troops...

...allow private business to compete with the Post Office on first class mail...

...From the Goldwater campaign, the Republicans learned a reasonable lesson- that they could not afford to sound like maniacs-but they learned a more debilitating lesson as well: they have become afraid to sound like anything...

...and they’re quick to applaud those who tell them the Good Word about the Republican Party...

...A filmed presentation about the series was unveiled at the January meeting of state chairmen, with the narrator proclaiming, “We feel this program can be a rallying point, a way of enthusing and inspiring Republicans and Independents all over the country...

...Nevertheless, the Lennon case is symbolic of the kind of transcendent issue that Bertini hopes will cause mass COnversions to the Republican Party...

...Take Michael MacLeod, the former executive director of the Ripon Society, who asserts, “The voters should be offered a choice between a moderate Republican Party and a liberal Democratic Party...

...Finally, the commercials asked this poignant question: “When has being a Republican been easy...

...The GOP is also in a good position to stress greater economic competition, in the name of fighting inflation...

...The shows are being billed as a “magazine of the air...

...A young Republican National Committee (RNC) staffer asserts, “People shouldn’t be ashamed to be Republicans...

...His division will aid local parties in identifying influential leaders, forming Republican community groups, and conducting direct mailings...

...The presentation promised that “each program will have a provocative opening to grab the audience’s attention...

...The pilot’s provocative opening was an eye-grabbing shot of President Ford announcing his energy program as the narrator intoned, “For President Ford, it is a time of real testing...

...An Emerging Republican Philosophy Although the dreams of the Republican conservatives seem more nostalgic than practical, they are performing a valuable service in forcing the GOP to think about issues and party philosophy...

...They’ve led the opposition to such instant-democracy devices as postcard registration, fearful of the prospect of barely-literate minorities voting a straight Democratic ticket...

...Buckley...

...To prove his point, he cited his opposition to the Ford Administration’s proposed cutbacks in food stamps, a position identical to that of the Democrats...

...When asked to define the future direction of the party, other leaders are equally resolute...

...Arthur Levine is an editor of The Washmgton Monthly...

...What we will be doing is demonstrating our concern for people,” Gaylord says...

...Conservative opposition to active implementation of this rule has been seen as a residue of Republican racism...

...Why, there were hospitals, roads, schools, nursing homes...

...Unfortunately, membership in youth groups like the Boy Scouts tends to drop off sharply at about age 14 and student councils never had much credibility with the alienated, particularly in working-class neighborhoods...

...Doncha believe in helpin’ old folks...

...Beginning a dialogue between different portions of the community and the local Republican Party is no small problem...

...They believe that virtually anyone is a potential convert to the Republican Party, if only he (or she-they are up on things at the RNC) can be shown that the GOP cares about them, and that those nasty myths about Republicans just aren’t true...

...It cannot come as a very great surprise that these efforts have been no more successful than Ford’s at filling the intellectual vacuum at the center of the party...

...and end “cost plus” contracts by government...

...An emphasis could be placed on antitrust actions, including opposition to vertical integration of businesses and mergers that threaten competition...

...A similar bewilderment about purpose, a simjlar lack of substance, afflicts those party organizations, like the National Republican Ukraiiian Nationalities Federation, designed to reach white ethnics...

...Barber Conable, chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee, says, “We should appeal to the American middle class on the things that unite people...

...A good place to start is the Democratic Party’s traditional alliance with the federal bureaucracy...

...The first priority, logically enough, will be to get unregistered Republicans on the voter rolls, and, after that, to get independents to register as Republicans...

...The emphasis on image rather than content is typical of the other tactics the Republicans are using in their endless quest to “broaden the party’s base...

...They had just learned from a specially commissioned poll that only 18 per cent of the American voters viewed themselves as Republicans...

...To reach cynical, alienated youth, Bertini is planning for local Republican organizations to contact youth groups like the Boy Scouts, YMCA, and student councils to set up seminars on “how the system works...

...One is proud to be Republicans and the other is proud to be Americans...

...What she forgot to mention is that it is also a Republican administration that is leading the fight to deport him...

...Lately, other Republicans have been echoing this inspirational chorus...

...I want a party that represents all the people, all points of view...

...Ray then delivers his message: “We believe in the free enterprise system, we believe in the individual and the rights of the individual-these are very sacred principles...

...That was the basic disagreement...

...This hurt their feelings...

...In fact, in many areas of the country, black Republicans run the risk of being smothered by the party’s enthusiasm as it embraces them...

...Until we do, the word Republican will be associated with Watergate, big business and hard times...

...But it was more than that: they represented two different worlds...

...In its postelection newsletter, for example, the heritage division proudly announced that, despite the Republican rout, the party’s six (count them) ethnic congressmen were reelected...

...Like what...

...To provide a further illustration of the gulf between the Republicans’ Elks-Club type efforts to attract new members and their fundamental confusion about why anyone would join the party, there is the...

...Not everyone has what it takes to be a black Republican...

...Despite the dismal precedent of the Goldwater campaign, there is the undeniable fact that at least a few million Americans are deeply dissatisfied with the liberalism of many national Republican figures...

...The RNC is placing its faith in technical expertise with an emphasis on voter registration, direct mail, research, polling, and computers, plus piles of money to hire campaign experts...

...Although it is hardly fair to identify Gerald Ford-who, even more than Lyndon Johnson, is an “accidental president”-as the ideological lodestone of the party, his own pathetic drift from one half-baked approach to an opposite and equally ad hoc measure is uncomfortably typical of the party as a whole...

...Viewed another way, of course, the statistics show that the GOP has sunk to such a degree that even a majority of the party’s traditional supporters have taken to the lifeboats...

...While many ethnics are being ravaged by the economy, the heritage division remains content to sponsor such festivities as folk dances and annual salutes to Lithuanian Independence Day...

...Richard Nixon made significant inroads with these ethnic groups in 1972, although his later publicized references to “thicknecked mick” and “that wop judge” were not well received in some quarters...

...The January preview illustrates what sort of competition Rhoda and All in the Family are up against...

...There are valid critiques to be made of bloated and ineffective government programs...

...The emphasis on voter regstration is a bit unusual for Republicans...

...The nation-wide poll showed that more families earning over $35,000 were Democrats than Republicans...

...The Democrats haven’t built a majority with young people,” says Gaylord...

...Perhaps the most important part of the television special is the section showing successful Republicans doing something worthwhile and legal...

...The Pepsi Generation Cathy Bertini, 24, is in charge of the youth division, and with her braces and her heart-shaped pendant that says CATHY, she looks like she’s just out of high school...

...As Gaylord explains it: “What happens when a candidate says, ‘I have a great many Spanish-speaking people in my district, and I don’t even know any Spanish-speaking people...

...There are many other areas Republicans should be thinking about...

...More business executives were Democrats as well...

...Viewers were also reminded that it was the Republican Party that abolished slavery, a telling argument against those who dared to attack the party’s record on more recent domestic policy...

...One aspect of the black Republican struggle is the party’s fight over a rule requiring “positive action” for nondiscrimination in delegate selection for the 1976 convention...

...Vice President Rockefeller, though, remains the man with the clearest vision of the party’s future...

...But in reality, many party leaders place their electoral hopes elsewhere-staking out a position just to the right of the Democrats...

...We’re outnumbered, and en masse registering is not going to help us...

...The Republican Party can reach out to those in the barrios of East L.A...

...Although times have changed, these beliefs are still around, preserved for ritualistic purposes at Lincoln Day dinners and other Republican gatherings...

...They’re available for us...

...House conservatives, as shown by a pamphlet entitled “50 Ways to Fight Inflation,” have come up with some intriguing cost-cutting suggestions...

...Back in the days when the Republicans did not bother to deny that they were the party of big business, they had an entire philosophy to set them apart from the Democrats...

...But, up until now, most Republican efforts in this direction have focused on the minutiae of funding and eligibility requirements for federal programs, rather than pursuing more fundamental Republican proposals such as the Family Assistance Plan...

...The heritage division is probably most energetic in its efforts to celebrate the accomplishments of any “ethnic” Republican-that is, anyone whose last name is less Anglicized than “Smith” or “Jones...

...It’s a point worth remembering as the party seeks to rise from the ashes...

...Yes, there is something familiar about the constant need for reaffirmation in the morale-boosting presentations at these Republican gatherings...