ustxtxb_obs_1962_06_29_50_00008-00000_000.pdf

Connally Or Cox? An Argument Raging \(The letters we are receiving from our readers on the question, Cox or Connally, are most interesting. They seem to manifest a spontaneous debate among Texas liberals and Democrats that rises from a movement that is conscious of its potency and struggling now for a concensus. We hope readers will continue to reflect and communicate with each other through the Stump on this May Skip It Sirs: … As of now I do not feel that I could, in good conscience, vote for a man who would mis-use Congressman Gonzalez’ good name and popularity and other tactics … even while self-righteously accusing Don Yarborough of mud-slinging. … Mr. Yarbor ough dealt only with the record: issues of which the voters should be reformed. … I will not vote Republican, but may sit this one outagain. … I urge … that we take our fellow Democrats on good faith … We lost, with honor. Let us keep that; there will be another day. Mrs. A. A. Luckenbach, Box 237, Odem. Liberal Dixiecrats Sirs: I feel regret, but not surprise, at the decision to support Cox against Connally. The certainty that many Dixiecrats in reverse would follow this course, as they did when they gave us John Tower, caused large numbers of good Democrats to vote for a man they believed could borough’s campaign closely. I was not impressed, but on his assurance to me that he would support Connally if he won the nomination, I voted for him, Yarborough, in the first primary. He also told me he worked for Lyndon Johnson’s nomination for the presidency and that he had worked for Blakley . . . I did notice the weak disclaimer at the head of Mr. Dugger’s piece in which he urged support of Cox … Connally’s supporters were reminded weekly that they were in Shivers’ camp.Has Mr. Dugger taken a look at his campmates? . . . When you endorse Nixon in ’64, because Johnson will, no doubt, have the place of v.p.I may have to make peace with the Dallas News. And by the way, when the News reported Yarborough’s expenditures for his campaign, they also reported Connally’s.The Observer, last week, gave only Connally’s. Yarborough repeatedly asked why a man would spend over $400,000 for an office paying $20,000 a year. If he can explain why a man would spend over $200,000 for that office, he will have half the answer. Lillian A. Kilgore, Dallas. Mrs. Kilgore is mistaken if she means to imply the Observer has endorsed Cox over Connally. It has not taken a position. . . . A column by the contributing editor would reflect his, not the editor’s, opinion. Dugger did not say he was for Cox; he asked questions.Ed. Liberals for Cox Sirs: Mr. Bill Kugle of Athens . . . completely ignores the fact that in the one-party states of the South, the Republican interests and the Republican-thinking voters are in the Democratic Party. Indeed, in Texas they now control the Democratic Party. Liberals who vote for Cox are doing so in order to build a two THE TEXAS OBSERVER Page 8 June 29, 1962 party system, and get those who believe like Harding, Taft, Jenner, Goldwater and Nixon into the Republican Party, as they are in two-party states. In no sense of the word are these liberals “turning on the Democratic Party” as Mr. Kugle suggests, but they are merely trying to rid it of domination by those who in two-party states are in the Republican Party. Wouldn’t it be better for liberalism if liberals, “real Democrats” if you please, controlled the Democratic Party in the states of the one-party South, and conservatives controlled the Republican Party, and we took our chances in November? Then if a conservative wins, he will win as a Republican and won’t exert a conservative influence in the counsels of the national Democratic Party; he will not deface the national image of the Democratic Party, and he will not have votes to cast for Lyndon Johnson for President at the 1968 National Democratic Convention. . . . Nella Dieter, 2206 La Casa Drive, Austin. Substantive Loyalty Sir: The Observer is to be commended for reprinting that excellent New York Post article by James A. Wechsler. It points up more clearly than anything that has been written that Texas Democrats will continue to be disregarded, discounted and ignored by the White House unless we defeat Connally now. The Wechsler article made me aware of what a strong admirer of Kennedy’s politics I am. It is time that we the embattled Democrats of Texas who have for so long supported the Kennedy program adapt the pragmatic and utterly realistic politics which the President himself practices. Unless we do this, until we defeat Connally and destroy the Johnson machine in the Democratic Party of Texas, we will not even get the time of day from the White House. As Wechsler pointed out Kennedy preferred to deal with Connally, who publicly opposed the Kennedy medical care program and the Kennedy education program, rather than with Yarborough, who supported the President’s stand down the line. . . . As was pointed out in a recent Observer article all of the special intereststhe Dallas and Houston banks, the major oil companies, and the corporate powers that beas distinguished from the naive and ideological so-called conservativesare asking for John Connally and want to retain the one-party system. Connally, not Cox, is the special interest candidate. . . . Cox’s election would destroy the one-party system and result in a mass-migration of brainwashed voters to the Republican primaries and Republican conventionswhere they are in two-party states. . . . Party loyalty if it is to have substance and not be just a shallow and superficial things means loyalty to the principles of the national Democratic Party, not to any party machinery or apparatus Or to any single individualbe he Connally, Yarborough, or Kennedy. . . . How can we owe allegance to the Connallys, Smiths, and Pools, who are simply puppets of the banks, investment firms and giant corporations. . . . Texans for a Two Party Texas. David G. Copeland, Waco, chairman. \(Mr. Copeland was a leading figure in Don Yarborough’s camCox and FM Sirs: To those liberals now plan ning to vote for Cox for governor, I pose the following question : If Robert Welch were running against Connally, would you vote for Welch? If your answer is yes, read no further. If not, then let me point to Cox’s former affiliation as executive secretary of the ultra-right-wing secret organization, Freedom-in-Action, with a philosophy closely paralleling that of the John Birch Society. Consider this spectacle . . . The governor of Texas appointing such men as J. Evetts Haley and General Walker as regents of state universities . . . making Dean Clarence Manion and Dr. George Benson honorary Texas citizens . . . proclaiming a state “Honor H. L. Hunt Day” . . . lending his name and the dignity of his office to every kind of extremist rally, radio and television programs . . . Picture him traveling around the South and other parts of the country giving impetus to extremist movements, urging school children to equate the Democratic Party with socialism and true Americanism with conservatism. What effect would all this have on the academic atmosphere of our schools and colleges, of our churches, of all our decent institutions? Freedom in Action’s third annual conference, held in Houston in October, 1959, heard its principal speaker, Dean Clarence Manion \(a member of the National Council of the John Birch Sociadministration for the greatest erosion of American liberties. … Liberals, of course, are justifiably disturbed by many of Connally’s supporters of the Shivercrat variety, by Connally’s talk of cutting state expenditures, by his attacks on labor and liberal voters as extremists, and by his \(Second of two parts on Billy THE FAITHFUL are never alI lowed to forget this financial need. The emotion-packed appeals that issue forth in print arein their own wayworks of art, and they do not neglect the personal touch, for they bear Hargis’ signature. They may be headlined “Emergency Appeal” or “Wonderful News”but whether the news from headquarters is good or bad, the theme, down Tulsa way, is usually pretty much the same: “Praybut send money.” “Shall I quit now?” Hargis wrote across the top of one such emergency appeal. “We must have helpI mean it. We either receive immediate help or Christian Crusade’s fight to preserve our freedoms and our churches may be through.” At the end of the letter, right near the handy and every-present coupon and Hargis’ own signature, was his handwritten closing appeal”Oh, friends, please don’t say NO!” In addition to the direct appeals for money, every issue of “Christian Crusade” magazine is loaded with attractive offers for the faithful. The issue of June, 1961, contained a pitch for funds on almost every pagean appeal to wipe the television fund deficit; bonus offer for subscriptions to the magazine; an appeal for subscriptions to “Weekly Crusader,” another Hargis publication; an appeal for dollars to pay for Zoll’s files; an ad for a hospitalization policy specially aimed at non-drinkers; 14 films featuring Dr. Hargis at $65 a print; an appeal to readers to send $1 for several copies of a Hargis speech”IMPORTANT actions at state Democratic conventions. All these give us serious pause for concern. But truthfully, do they not pale beside the possibility of helping put into the governor’s mansion a man with the extremist views of Jack Cox? Ruthe Winegarten, Dallas. Now Look Here! Sir: In the most recent edition of the Observer, Bill Kugle of Athens wrote in a letter that you published, ” . . . 90 percent of whose members in Congress voted against social security.” This statement implies that Republicans in Congress voted against social security. This statement is not true. When the social security act of 1935 was passed a majority of Republicans in both the House and Senate voted for its passage; in fact 85 of the 110 Republican House members voted for passage and a similar percentage of Republican Senators supported the measure. The Eisenhower administration brought an additional 12 million people under social security coverage and lowered the participating age for women to 62. . . . Insofar as I know no responsible Republican leader has ever opposed social security or has advocated that the system be abolished. While I do not wish to debate the merits of either our Republican Party or the Democratic Party, I resent Mr. Kugle’s implication of an image of the Republican Party by listing such onetime Republican leaders as Harding, Taft, Jenner, and so forth. It would be just as accurate to include Elihu Root, Theodore Roosevelt, William Seward, Charles Evans Hughes, Earl Warren, Nelson Rockefeller, Abraham Lincoln, Henry Cabot Lodge, Raymond Baldwin, Wendell Willkie, TO THE SURVIVAL OF THE NATION!”; an ad for “Christian Crusade’s” Bible study course eight work-books in three volumes for only $1 a volume with “a special bonus for those ordering all three volumes”; a plug for Hargis’ book”paperback at $1, clothbound at $2regular $3 value. THE EXPERT fund-raising stra tagems of the Christian Crusader are the results of a happy andfor Hargisfortunate colWhite, a 43-year-old Tulsa advertising man, under whose wing Hargis placed himself some six or seven years ago. White, earlier, had built faith healer Oral Roberts into a million-dollar-a-year operation in a few years of intensive promotion. He has helped to do the same with Hargis. When the two got together, Hargis was limping along with a four-page periodical that reached 20,000 readers and his billings for radio time were one-tenth of what they are today. To keep the tax-deductible contributions arriving in the daily mail at headquarters, Hargis employs the services of 52 persons, plus the separate services rendered by White and his ad agency. Everything is businesslike and modern mailing equipment abounds at headquarters. Most of the contributions are in the $1 to $2 category, with an average of $2 to $4 a letter, acocrding to White. These, plus larger contributions from wealthier faithful, plus $145,000 earned last year in speaking fees, plus another $50,000 taken in from record album sales, keep the Crusade staff and book George Norris, to name but just a few. Mr. Kugle might also do well to remember that it was Republican leadership that directed the Civil War, planned the Panama Canal, enacted the first federal employees merit system and civil service, passed the first adequate civil rights legislation in 82 years, initiated the Atoms for Peace program, held devaluation of the dollar to only four cents during the eight Eisenhower years while raising the gross national product one fourth, established the Open Door Policy in China, passed the Land Grant College Act, started conservation of natural resources. . .. created the Pan American Union, wrote the Briand-Kellogg Treaty that outlawed war, passed the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, passed the Federal Reclamation Act of 1902, achieved the first important voluntary agreement for limitation and reduction of armaments at the Washington Naval Conference in 1922, and had courage enough to veto the Harris Natural Gas Act when admission of political gifts extraordinary were made in 1956. These actions are as much a part of the Republican Party tradition as any other historical event. And consequently Mr. Cox is a part of this Republican legend just as much as the absurd statement of Republican leadership condoning children under 14 working in fac