ustxtxb_obs_1964_10_30_50_00004-00000_000.pdf

.F.7:.TawcrwmmowlPW4.1111111Mie 0400.44,4N AA*416,-n .arett , : nowst.e*1 accuses Yarborough of siding with “a militant, mean band of left-wingers” by voting to continue foreign aid to Sukarno in Indonesia. Sen. Yarborough has needled him for being skittish about all-out support for = Barry Goldwater. No doubt Sen. Yarborough hoped this line of attack would force Bush to assure his supporters he is for Goldwater, and whatever the reason for it may be, Bush is now going out of his way to mention his total support of Goldwater and to defend him. In Fort Worthduring a day of campaigning as the Observer man followed alongBush was asked, during a 30-minute TV taping session with a KTVT newsman, about Goldwater. “Of the two, I am strongly for Senator Goldwater for President,” he replied. “He’s a warm, friendly man, a reasonable man extremely reasonable.” Charges that Goldwater has his finger on the trigger or is “a madman” are “just unfair,” Bush said. Pressed to specify policies on which he might differ with Goldwater, Bush said, “I don’t like to probe around for differences with people with whom I philosophically disagree,” he replied \(evidently having meant to say “agree,” but he did not notice find differences with Senator Goldwater, but I don’t elect to do this,” he said firmly, putting his questioner down. “I don’t believe in terror, finger-on-thetrigger,” he said during a speech in Fort Worth. “I don’t think that’s the philosophy of the leader on the Republican ticket, by the way. I know him and know him well and believe he’s a reasonable man.” THIS DAY on the campaign tour began for Bush at 7 a.m. and did not end until 10 at night. He had come in, what’s more, from a rally in Corpus Christi the night before, and left for East Texas the morning after Fort Worth. He tired, and he tapped out an hour or so before his TV taping in the afternoon, but he is a strong, steady campaigner who goes forward to shake hands with everyone in range. Fifty or so Optimists attended a breakfast for him, and he made them a somewhat muted speech. He said of Yarborough that he had “not called him `Smilin’ Ralph’ or `Rasslin’ Ralph’ ” in the interests of discussing the issues. His basic argument that he is winning tots up what he takes to be “the ingredients of victory.” He had been endorsed at this point, he said, by 17 daily papers, to Yarborough’s three or four ; he said polls show him ahead; he said Republican canvassing and organization helps him; he said leading Democrats are supporting himhe names Governor Allan Shivers, Marshall Formby of Plainview, Ed Drake, “for ten years county Democratic, chairman in Dallas,” \(a leader in Democrats-for-Republican movements there during the dent of Baylor University. And, he said, 4 The Texas Observer “You feel the crowdsenthusiasmit’s building up.” On ineffectiveness, Bush said, “Three times Sen. Yarborough got seniority on the appropriations committee, and three times his own colleagues turned their backs on him.” He also said Yarborough has a “rift” with state Democratic officialsobviously a reference to Governor John Connally. “I think I can get along with both sides of the aisle in simple human relations,” Bush said. He faults Yarborough for calling Lyndon Johnson, as vice-president, a “powermad Texas politician,” Connally “a viceroy of Texas,” Dallas “a citadel of reaction,” and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram “worse than Pravda,” He recites the senator’s publicized set-to with Sen. Strom Thurmond a few months ago as a matter first to be laughed at, then to be indignant about because it is “beneath the dignity of Texans and the U.S. Senate.” To the Optimists he said, “The answer to poverty doesn’t lie in a hand-out, a billiondollar program,” such as “this CCC program in the thirties that failed.” New industry, jobs, and free enterprise are the answer, he said. “I admit this is a vast oversimplification,” he said, but it is a better answer for Texas than trying to “prop up ailing businesses.” In every speech of much length, Bush recites two cases prosecuted, one-two, in the September and October Reader’s Digest: the new industry in Crockett, Tex., that was backed for a while by the Area Recovery Administration, President Kennedy, and Sen. Yarborough, but stalled and failed; and the Yarborough-announced $1.8-million urban renewal program in Wink, Tex., which the Digest said subsequently lost popularity, business, and real estate valuations. “I don’t think you can prop up the ailing economy of a dying town,” he told the Optimists. “Sometimes you’ve got to have a man who will resist a hand-out for political gain. I think it’s a question of balance.” In place of federal aid to “failing communities” and “failing businesses,” Bush would work with the Texas Industrial Cmsn., chambers of commerce, and others to attract new industries to Texas, “find export markets for Texas products,” uphold “enlightened self-interest” in U.S. tariff and import policy, favor a “meaningful oil import program,” free natural gas companies from “utility-type regulation.” He said that the seven years Yarborough has been in the Senate, oil prices have gone down, imports have gone up, and Texas drilling rigs haGe decreased 55%, while cattle prices are “crucifyingly low” and imports are higher. To the Optimists he said, “Surely it’s not fair to blame him [Yarborough] for all this,” but in other speeches that day he did not add this qualification. “I’m not a ‘hate-the-government creep,’ ” Bush said of a charge against him he attributes to Yarborough, “I believe in a decentralized federal governmentand in the separation of powersand I don’t like George Bush to see the encroachment of these agencies into our lives.” He couches his opposition to medicare medical care for the agedin a flow of argument he follows somewhat closely each time. “I would vote to strengthen the social security system,” he said, “but I would vote against medical care under social security. I favor medical care for the aged, but under Kerr-Mills and ‘Texas 65,’ ” he said. “I would not say to this fella working with his hands, ‘Look, you’ve got to pay for medical care for this rich fella over here, whether you want to or not.’ This isn’t fair. This isn’t the American system. “I don’t believe that we conservatives should be placed in the position of being opposed to compassion for our fellow men,” he said. “The philosophy of the left is to stick a hyphen in everybody’s name, and give a little something for every special group.” He said there’s a government program that brings apes and baboons from Africa for experiments in space science, but they have been dying in the ship holds because the air is dank. “The federal government has a new program, a very cheap one, $585 million,” to air condition the holds, Bush said, and the program is called “medical air for the caged.” \(He pronounced the word “caged” as one would pronounce the noun, Optimists laughed. “I would hope it’s one program the federal government will stay out of,” he said. In Cuba, Bush said, we were right when we had “the courage to turn back those Russian ships,” and taking a more forceful position in Viet Nam, “we did the right thing.” He would not castigate the President’s loyalty when he disagreed with him, he said. As for now, he said, the United States should “recognize a Cuban government-in