ustxtxb_obs_1961_10_13_50_00004-00000_000.pdf

Action in the big match at the Driskill Bowl last week: Speed demon quarterback P. Daniel, No. 2, desperately prods blocking back J. Connally, but to no avail. Bruising left tackle W. Wilson, No. .1, heads in for the kill, smearing the signal caller for a 10-yard loss. The partisan croud watched in utter silence. Daniel is a senior from Liberty, Connally a freshman’ front Fort Worth. Wilson is from Dallas, but his eligibility ran out last April.. 54 in Racea The state Democratic executive committee met in Austin this week to determine how to revitalize the party in Texas. It was a remarkable study in myopia. From the very outset, the “leaders” of the party made it all too clear they lack even the most elementary understanding of the changing political climate of the state. After hearing their patent remedies and pale nostrums, one could only reach the conclusion that the executive committee and the leaders of the party had best begin by revitalizing themselves. The wholesale defections to the state GOP will strengthen the Democratic Party, Gov. Daniel declared, but in the meantime the party had better get moving again. And so he offered his “five points” ; in aggregate they are only a little less bland than the constitution of the Girl Scouts of America. On one point the governor did hit hard, as might be expected : the state Democratic Party should continue to belittle and contradict the objectives of the national party. Further, said Daniel, the argument must be presented to aspiring deserters that the platform of the state Detnocratic Party is one on which “all Texans can agree” a platform, in other words, that stands for nothing. On the very day the fiasco transpired, the chairman of the state GOP fired off a telegram to Democratic chairman J. Ed Connally. One of the principal issues between the two parties, said Tad Smith of El Paso, is the issue of “centralized federal spending vs. states’ rights.” The right of a state like Texas, perhaps, to continue, year in and year out, to support one of the most impoverished and anachronistic programs of social serv A campaign has been launched to buy Will Wilson a black cape, made of the finest gabardine available. Will has been barging in on one public meeting and committee hearing after another these days without the merest semblance of an invitation. His wellsynchronized attacks on our governor have largely failed, however, because of his civilian clothes. Garbed properly in his black cape, he could lurk in the shadows of as many public meetings as his heart desires, and at the right moment, with prim folks sitting quiet and unsuspecting, spring a leap to the dead center of the rostrum, cape aflying, and furnish the necessary dramatic flourish to make every morning paper in the Central Time Zone. ices in the entire country? To continue to have a state legislature upon which the business lobby flourishes so grandly and so unmolestedly that no lobbying group with a broader popular basis has even begun to approximate a parity in power? And yet not one solitary Democratic voice was raised against the real political significance of this, and similar, Republican clarions. Let the conservative Democrats go where they belong, to their Alger and Goldwater kindred among the Texas Republicans where, as Franklin Jones has it, “all movement is under suspicion and every birth of a new idea is a terrifying scandal.” The experience in other states, not to mention the more recent lesion of the TowerBlakley romp, has surely taught the Daniels and the Connallys that any effort to out-Republican the Repub 7 licans will end in complete folly. As a two-party system slowly begins to emerge from the backwaters in which our state political institutions have been awash for decades, the Texas Democratic Party is going to have to learn sooner or later though it make take a thoroughgoing turnover in personnel to accomplish it–that the only way to triumph over its more conservative partisan opposition is to revivify the traditions of the Democratic past, the principles of Jackson and Wilson, Hogg and Allred and Roosevelt, and to restore the links with the party’s national ideals. The leaders of the state party will either face these facts, or they likely will not long survive. And if they are unwilling or unable to counter the Republican challenge with a dynamic and responsible program of party action, then the quicker the better. In this flamboyant personal duel between two of the most exciting politicians since Charles James Fox and Pitt the Younger, who will take the honors? Those who prefer Will should send their contributions to Cape, Box 1962, Capitol Station. Chairman of solicitations is Price Daniel. Vicechairman is Tom James. Modest Contribution AUSTIN HUMAN EVENTS, that widelycirculated national journal dealing in those curious events which intercept our fellow humans who occasionally stray into that mysterious Other Side inhabited by Bill Buckley Jr., Clarence Manion, and way further out there, Bob Welch, devoted the front page of its October 6 number to the “Resignation Rallies in Texas.” The journal says these switches from the Democratic to the Republican Party are “the spontaneous expression of growing resentment of the voting record this year of Southerners in Congress. Two or three years ago, about 33 percent of the Southern members of the House and the Senate could be labeled as liberals. Since JFKif their voting record is the criterionthe proportion has climbed up toward 60 percent.” The reaction in Texas, says Human Events, is favorable to outraged response. The Texas GOP is 100 percent conservative. “In the Bruce Alger tradition, the party . . . . contains no liberals. In fact, Texas Republicans bluntly label themselves ‘Goldwater Republicans’ to kill any doubts about their genuine conservatism. “The exodus is further encouraged,” the journal reports, “by important liberal Democrats. Frank endorsement of the move has been given by the influential Texas Observer.” The resignation rallies, Human Events continues, “are just one more extent of the astonishing extent of the conservative resurgence.” And it adds with an utterly straight face: “No political movement of comparable force has been seen in this century. Possibly nothing like it, excepting the Abolition Movement, has happened in American history.” We have long suspected, of course, in moments of quiet self-indulgence, that our modest little journal is, indeed, influential. But to hear from no less an authority than Human Events that we have contributed to a movement greater yet than populism, protectionism, bimetalism, women’s suffrage, prohibition, the Ku Klux Klan, the White Citizens Council, the Brown Shirts, and “New Republicanism” is too good to be true. SURELY you have read recently about the federal judge in Oklahoma who a year ago dismissed a big antitrust suit against the major oil companies and now has quit to take a job as chief counsel of Gulf Oil. Senator Kefauver has suggested the conflict of interest laws be applied to judges, too. What? You didn’t read about it ? You mean your home-town newspaper didn’t play up such a shocking story? Okay; so even if you did see the story back on the funny page somewhere, you’re indignant. But test your Published by Texas Observer Co., Ltd. Entered as second-class matter, April 26, 1937, at the Post Office at Austin, Texas, under the Act of March 3, 1879. OCTOBER, 13, 1961 Willie Morris Editor and General Manager Bob Sherrill, Associate Editor Sarah Payne, Office Manager Ronnie Bugger, Contributing Editor own balance before you get hot at the newspapers. Suppose the guy who had released the monitorship of the teamsters had shortly thereafter become general counsel of the teamsters. Judge your own likely reaction. It would be stronger than against that respectable judge old Keef is picking on, wouldn’t it? And this is unsettling: that although we know what pressures are working on us, as American liberals we cannot be sure that our values and perspectives have not also been warped by those pressures. IT IS ONE of the right-wingers’ tactics to accuse those who disagree with them of helping the communists. We have long thought this an outrageous and an unfair tactic and were pleased to find J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation presently under Pres. Kennedy, agreeing with us. Therefore, we cannot but rue, deplore, and tchtwitch these observations appearing in the New York Times Magazine, by Stanley Mosk and Howard H. Jewel: “Even the Russians apparently beBirch Society are actively serving the Communist cause. The Literary Gazette of Moscow, under date Of April 4, 1961, carried the following article in the Russian language: ” ‘The predictions of Lenin are materializing in . . . the United States . . . Lenin said that the most ardent foes of communism will eventually become frightened and suspicious of anybody who does not agree with them. In this manner these extremely nationalistic capitalists will actually work for the cause of communism by eliminating some of the largest obstacles on the road toward a world-wide Communist way of life . . ” `SeYeral years ago an American Senator by the name of McCarthy performed a great service to world communism . . . by throwing suspicion of Communist affiliation on some very important personalities of the capitalist world. He was so involved in this particular activity that, instead of harming, he actually strengthened the Communist party in the U.S.A. ” ‘Now the Communist movement has gained unexpectedly a new supporter. His name is Robert Welch. This former candymaker went one step further. He has published a book which compares with Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf,’ in which he outlines his program. . . ” -;:WHEN WE heard about Lady Bird Johnson selling her television station down at Weslaco for just a few million dollars, we feared she might be in financial distress, so we tuned in on her Austin radio station, KTBC, the other morning to see how the ads were running. In the fine tradition of American radio, they were running as dominantly as could be desired, with the station “Where Showmanship Prevails” making a break for the cornmercial on an average ofonce every two minutes-23 times in the 45 minutes we listened, to be exact. We also timed the ads as best we could, and by our calculation they totaled up to just over 16 minutes, or more than one-third the time, and that doesn’t count the pauses and musical shuffling it takes to get into and out of the commercials. Published once a week from Austin, Texas. Delivered postage prepaid $5 per annum. Advertising rates available on request. Extra copies 15c each. Quantity prices available on order. EDITORIAL and BUSINESS OFFICE: 504 West 24th St, Austin, Texas. Phone GReenwood 7-0746. HOUSTON OFFICE: Mrs. R. D. Randolph, 4191/2 Lovett Blvd., Houston 6, Texas. Ca r e for Witt Observer Notebook THE TEXAS OBSERVER