ustxtxb_obs_1966_07_22_50_00002-00000_000.pdf

Observations Abreast Behind the Eight-Ball Austin It’s too early to get excited about Tower vs. Carr. Let those two time-tested reactionaries do the best they can to persuade the more enlightened voters to their side; they’ve got plenty of time and plenty of room. The longer they jockey for the support of liberal folk the better, since all either of them can do is move leftif either moved any further right he’d fall off the cliff. There’s a rancor in the arguments on the subject among liberals. The hotsies for Tower seem to think that to be for Carr is a blend of selling out and mental deficiency. The apologists for Carr regard liberals for Tower as bitter and mindless. Neither sees the other’s side, but each has a side, and a good one. The case against both Carr and Tower is completely persuasive. Considered, in the vacuum the idea either of them creates, as public servants, they are devious rightwing politicians. It used to be said and thought that Tower was a rightist, yes, but a rightist of purist principle. As he crawfishes even on being a Republican and gives out with the announcements of those new federal grants for the natives, while making all the hay he can out of Vietnam and the issue the pollster told him would Incorporating the State Observer and the East Texas Democrat, which in turn incorported the State Week and Austin ForumAdvocate. We will serve no group or party but will hew hard to the truth as we find it and the right as we see it. We are dedicated to the whole truth, to human values above all interests, to the rights of man as the foundation of democracy; we will take orders from none but our own conscience, and never will we overlook or misrepresent the truth to serve the interests of the powerful or cater to the ignoble in the human spirit. Editor and General Manager, Ronnie Dugger. Partner, Mrs. R. D. Randolph. Associate Editor, Larry Lee. Business Manager, Sarah Payne. Contributing Editors, Elroy. Bode, Bill Brammer, Larry Goodwyn, Harris Green, Dave Hickey, Franklin Jones, Lyman Jones, Larry L. King, Georgia Earnest Klipple, Al Melinger, Robert L. Montgomery, Willie Morris, Greg Olds, James Presley, Charles Ramsdell, Roger Shattuck, Robert Sherrill, Dan Strawn, Tom Sutherland, Charles Alan Wright. Staff Artist, Charles Erickson. Contributing Photographer, Russell Lee. The editor has exclusive control over the editorial policies and contents of the Observer. None of the other people who are associated with the enterprise shares this responsibility with him. Writers are responsible for their own work, but not for anything they have not them make votes, inflation, that once so pleasing idea of him goes whistling for a taker. No one has ever mistaken Carr for the kind of politician who would rather be right than re-elected, so the net result of the tarnishment of Tower as a pillar of principle is that both men stand abreast behind the eight-ball. WHAT, THEN, is the case for Tower, and what is the case for Carr? Senator Ralph Yarborough’s staff, now area COPE director for seven northern states, makes the case well for Tower. That case rests mostly on the benefits of the twoparty state, which Texas is not and is not likely to become within the next six years if Tower loses. “One-party domination has created a closed society in state government,” Caldwell says. In Texas, he says, “the Connallycrats borrow Republicans in the spring primaries to beat the liberals, and then they borrow the liberals they just beat to beat the Republicans in November.” Thus there is no way “to get at ’em” to make them account for their policies. In California, Caldwell continues, they used to have a cross-filing system under which candidates could run as members of selves written, and in publishing them the editor does not necessarily imply that he agrees with them, because this is a journal of free voices. Subscription Representatives: Austin, Mrs. Helen C. Spear, 2615 Pecos, HO 5-1805; Dallas, Mrs. Cordye Hall, 5835 Ellsworth, TA 1-1205; Denton, Fred Lusk, Box 8134 NTS; Fort Worth, Dolores Jacobsen, 3025 Greene Ave., WA 4-9655; Houston, Mrs. Shirley Jay, 10306 Cliffwood Dr., PA 3-8682; Huntsville, Jessie L. Murphree, Box 2284 SHS; Lubbock, Doris Blaisdell, 2515 24th St.; Midland, Eva Dennis, 4306 Douglas, OX 42825; Odessa, Enid Turner, 1706 Glenwood, EM 6-2269; Rio Grande Valley, Mrs. Jack Butler, 601 Houston, McAllen, MU 6-5675; San Antonio, Mrs. Mae B. Tuggle, 531 Elmhurst, TA 6-3583; Cambridge, Mass., Victor Emanuel, 33 Aberdeen Ave., Apt. 3A. The Observer is published by Texas Observer Co., Ltd., biweekly from Austin, Texas. Entered as second-class matter April 26, 1937, at the Post Office at Austin, Texas, under the Act of March 3, 1879. Second class postage paid at Austin, Texas. Delivered postage prepaid $6.00 a year; two years, $11.00; three years, $15.00. Foreign rates on request. Single copies 25c; prices for ten or more for students, or bulk orders, on request. Editorial and Business Offices: The Texas Observer, 504 West 24th St., Austin, Texas 78705. Telephone GR 7-0746. Change of Address: Please give old and new address and allow three weeks. both the major parties. Republicans had most of the money, and thus you had the advent of Bill Knowland to the U.S. Senate as the nominee of both parties in California. Changing the system to a twoparty system, Caldwell says, resulted in Pat Brown as governor and the formation of the California Democratic Clubs. True, Ronald Reagan may beat Brown this year, but there has been a liberal governor for eight years, and there is the fine California delegation in the U.S. House. The voters of industrial two-party states have real, viable alternatives when they go to vote. In Florida the first semblance of a twoparty system has resulted in the first semblance of a liberal governor, Robert King High, Caldwell continues. The very liberal Democratic nominee for governor in Pennsylvania could not be nominated in a one-party state, since Republicans vote with the non-liberal Democrats in the oneparty state’s primaries. As Caldwell sees the two-party question in Texas, there was not much of a Republican Party here before 1957, but that year lanky Thad Hutcheson, the personable Houston Republican, ran a dedicated, vigorous campaign for the U.S. Senate and finished a respectable third in an absurdly large field. Ralph Yarborough won because Martin Dies, the conservative Democrat who ran second, was deprived of the Republican votes Hutcheson got. That year, for once, Caldwell says, “Dallas didn’t kill us.” In 1958 the Republicans held a primary for the first time, simultaneously with the Democratic primary, and while a mere 16,000 Texans voted Republican, most of them were in Dallas. Caldwell figures that the GOP’s primary shaved Yarborough’s margin of defeat in Dallas that year by 11,000 votes. Texas Republicans gained ground in the 1960 presidential year. Then in 1961 the tory Democrats put up Cowboy Bill Blakley, a devoted foe of federal aid for anything but his own airline, for the Senate, and this caused division among the Democrats. “Many of us decided we had other things to do election day, and John Tower was elected. Many of us who were not exactly unhappy when that happened,” Caldwell said, “believed that Tower’s election would provide the drawing card for conservatives to move into the Republican Party.” The “resignation rallies” beganrallies at which tory Democrats announced they were going over to the GOP. The matter came to a head again with the November, 1962, question between Republican Jack Cox or Democrat John Connally for governor. The liberals were divided whether to be for Cox, Connally, or not to vote; Cox got 46% of the vote, but Connally was THE TEXAS OBSERVER Texas Observer Co., Ltd. 1966 A Journal of Free Voices A Window to the South 60th YEAR ESTABLISHED 1906 Vol. 58, No. 13 7. July 22, 1966