ustxtxb_obs_1961_04_29_50_00005-00000_000.pdf

CIIIIIIIMNIMMIMIMN,C7 C X DON’T BE HALF SAFE! In the Senate Race, Write-ink: GREGORY EFIMOVICH RASPUTIN Gregory E. Easputin Tried and tested, a True Conservative The anti-communist candidate ; likewise a vigorous foe of Menshevism, Belshovism, Liberalism Widely traveled; sturdy; strong A WHITE Russian A States-Rights Czarist, Pro-Landed Nobility ; Can any other candidate make that statement? Won’t rock the boat; dead 43 years HOUSTON Full-time, all the way, hundred percent, never-think-maybe-not Democrats will troop, march, lock-step to the polls May 27th and vote for a so-called Democrat who keynoted the first Freedom in Action banquet, retained state senators on his company’s payroll, bragged that in 1957 in the Senate his record was 100% for Eisenhower, calls liberalism socialism and socialism communism, opposes the welfare state except for Braniff Airways, and now favors the withdrawal of the United States from the United Nations. In this way, such voters will emerge from the election of Bill Blakley with their consistency intact. Even the brass-collar Democrat has a way out if he wants to rationalize. The arguments run like this: One. Blakley was rejected by Democrats the one time he asked them to nominate him for an office, in 1958. Two. He is not a Democrat. The party loyalist is committed to support Democrats, but he is not committed to support everyone who calls himself a Democrat. Three. The April 4th vote was not a party primary, its results binding on Democrats ; the ballot drew no distinction between Republicans and Democrats. Therefore, the loyal Democrat is not bound. These seem to be sophistical arguments, or at best merely technical, but they appeal to party officials looking for a way out and some people who love the Democratic Party but cannot stand Bill Blakley. For those who do not let their thought processes fall down in a dead faint on border of party loyalty, a hearing of John Tower and a consideration of the other optionsvote for Tower, don’t vote, or write someone inare in order. OHN TOWER wants liberals’ votes, an attitude no one has so far perceived in his opponent. Tower is opposed to the withdrawal of the United States from the United Nations. He says on the record he is a “moderate” on civil-rights. He cornmits himself to the defense of civil liberties. He is so conservative on principle, he cannot find a single part of Kennedy’s legislative program he will support. He favors right-to-work laws, the Landrum-Griffin law, and the extension of anti-trust laws to labor unions. In the name of capitalism, existing institutions, and minimum government, he opposes federal aid to education, medical care for the aged, higher minimum wages, urban renewal, slum’ clearancethe whole Democratic works. Tower says Blakley will probably vote liberal more often than Tower because Blakley is expedient. He says he is principled and can be counted on to vote his conservative convictions. If one wishes to be expedient and the main consideration with him is which of these two conservatives will stick his nose through the slats of the Republican corral occasionally, he will logically vote for Blakley. There is, however, more involved. A TWO-PARTY STATE is one obvious consideration. Tower says his election would encourage other able young men to run as Republicans and improve the choices voters have between the parties. He does not mention that his election would also be a most persuasive argument to conservative Democrats to become Republicans. It would become more plausible for conservatives to be Republicans \(because of which of the various venalities and Then there is the effect on Yarborough. Electing Blakley is like sending the bottom side of a sandwich to Washington, Johnson being the top side and Yarborough the barbecue to go between them. Blakley could cancel out Yarborough’s authority on patronage, especially with Johnson slippering around at the White House. Blakley would tear up Yarborough at every turn. Blakley in the Senate would enhance the strength of the conservatives within the Democratic Party. Allan Shivers quite possibly would run against Yarborough in 1964 with Blakley’s support. Senator Tower, on the other hand, would be an all-out partisan enemy of Yarborough’s. He would have no effect on Yarborough’s patronage, being an official as well as a de facto Republican. Every time Yarborough and Tower snarled at each other in public, they would help the causes of liberalism in the Democratic Party and Republicanism, respectively. In 1964 Yarborough could go to the people as the foe of Republicans not only in the country but in the state, an attractive image for an incumbent Texas senator. There is the question of 1966, too. We should make no mistake about this : Tower would be hard to defeat. Any incumbent senator is. They say in Washington the only way to defeat a United States senator is catch him in bed with a dead woman or a live man. But in Texas, Tower a Republican, would be less difficult to defeat than Blakley, a conservative Democrat. On the other side is the consideration that Tower is younger and apparently healthier, so that if either one of them is going to be re-elected, Texas would probably be represented longer by Tower than by Blakley. BUT THE MAIN QUES-tion is who these two men are. We know Blakley is an opportunist. He tried to sell himself as a Cowboy in 1957; since that didn’t work, he’s trying to sell himself as a business-statesman now. He did play Lyndon Johnson’s game to an extent in 1957; he voted for Kennedy and Johnson after having voted for Eisenhower twice ; but running for the Senate last ‘month he said he is now opposed to the Democrats’ program and to Kennedy himself, and when Republican Wright Morrow asked him on Houston TV whether he had voted too liberal in 1957, he replied that his 1957 Senate record was 100% for Eisenhower ! Or what can one think of a man who bitterly opposes federal subsidies and welfare grants as socialism, but has received his share of the millions of dollars in federal funds which have subsidized his Braniff Airways? These facts raise questions so delicate, even the questions cannot be stated. Tower, on the other hand, gave up his job as a college teacher of government to run for office as a Republican against Lyndon Johnson, the most powerful politician in Texas and one of the most powerful in the United States. Let anyone quibble about his courage after that performance. He stands without a quaver against all the appealing social welfare legislation which offends his conservative economics. Let anyone quibble about his conviction knowing this. Yet he will not race-bait as Blakley did on the Weaver appointment, he calls himself a moderate on civil rights, believes in civil liberties, and he says when pressed that he believes he has a sense of justice and wants to be fair. Let anyone quibble about his decency after having met him. Together these matters lead naturally and plausibly to the conclusion that Tower is a person of integrity. T HE RESULTS of the April 4 election were, of course, a liberal disaster, and neither outcome May 27, Tower or Blakley, can change that. Liberals lose May 27 either way ; the day is already marked off, a dead loss. Many will go fishing to remind themselves that politics is, after all, a great deal less than everything, and a bass tugging down the tip of a pole an adequate consolation for the thunderstorms in public life. It seems a logical thing to do, and in harmony with the season and the natural life. Others will need to go to the polls, from habit, from concern, or from the mystical duty to take part. Voting for Tower would be voting for a Goldwaterbreed Republican, but it would also be voting against the Shivers Democrats and for a two-party state, for the better situation for Yarborough, for the better chance at the Senate seat in 1966, and for a decent, honest man. If one must vote and can’t vote for either candidate, there are always friends who can be written in, good men who will never be in politics or whose time is coming. But a vote for Blakley would be a vote for the worst enemies of liberalism in Texasthe fanatical right wingers who have wrapped themselves in the stolen banners of Democrats. R.D. 01′ Huey, He Woulda Liked All ‘at Talk AUSTIN Huey Long, who once filibustered in the U.S. Senate on a homestead bill by reading from a library truckload of cookbooks telling how to jerk meat and bake unleavened bread, yes, the old Kingfisher himself would have approved the carryings-on in the Texas Senate this week where young dandy from Brownsville. Hubert Hudson, harangued the hours away in their fight against the bill that would make the University of Houston a state-supported university. These men are showmen, great showmenif not the greatest senatorsand surely the University of Texas must have been chagrined to learn that its week-long playing of “Macbeth” would have to run in cornpetition with the week-long filibuster. Moore, who introduced an amendment that, instead of admitting UH in 1963, as Houston Senator Bob Baker desires, would admit it in the year 2000, read an editorial from the Austin American opposing UH’s request. Moore prefaced the reading by saying, “This is one of the few articles in that paper I have approved of. I have often wondered how a town the size of Austin can get along without a newspaper. This is a good editorialbut, then, even a blind hog can sometimes find an acorn.” He called UH “Cullen’s tombstone”; he laughed at its offering a PhD in flute playing and a master’s degree in restaurant management; he called it a “trade school” so many times Baker finally arose in anger to protest to the chair, “Don’t we have any control over his imagination?” BUT THE high point in Moore’s performance of the week came when, having held the floor for nearly two hours, he was mercifully interrupted by a senator with a courtesy resolutionand in that brief period he ran off the floor to meet one of the basic needs of any man, even a filibusterer. This was a Chaucerian moment, and it evoked Chaucerian glee from the galleries. But there was another filibuster, or budding filibuster, launched by Sen. Charles Herring against the bill that would change the name of North Texas State College to University of North . Texas. Inasmuch as this would be the fifth name for the school since 1890, when it was founded as North Texas Normal, there were some grounds for levity on the part of the filibusterers, who suggested that a better name for it would be North Texas University of Music, that Lufkin Junior College might want to change its name to Lufkin Junior University, and that “since we’re having a hard time finding boys who want to go there,” maybe Gatesville School for Boys should be re-named Gatesville University for Boys. LANE SAID, puffing on his cigar: “Don’t you know, if I’d had a good favorable legislature, they’d have changed the name of Center High School to Center University or Center College, and I’d ipso facto been a college graduate without having to spend four years and a lot of money down here at UT.” He added that while all the name changing was going on he wanted to reserve the name “Oxford University” for a school at Teneha in his district. “When we get ready to go,” he said, “we want to go first class.” True, there was nothing exactly constructive in all this, but on the other hand it warms the breast to hear laughter ringing through the clubhouse while Uncle Ben beaks benignly from his nest. B.S. The Stolen Banners Thoughts on the May Election