ustxtxb_obs_1966_07_22_50_00003-00000_000.pdf

elected. Although, fixated on the Goldwater nomination, the Texas Republicans by 1963 had locked themselves on the course that was bound to derail them nationally, they were planning mass resignation rallies in December, 1963, and January, 1964, and they had set a goal of 400,000 voters in the spring Republican primary. Those 400,000 votes, Caldwell says, would have come “off the top” of the Connallycrats’ votes. Caldwell remembers that a Bo Byers poll in the Houston Chronicle published the morning of November 22, 1963, showed Don Yarborough and Connally in a dead heat for governor, “and that was before the added impact of what was getting ready to be pulled off.” But then, Johnson the President, the picture changed. Johnson was for Connally and soon made it clear he would function, in Texas, through Connally. This not only discouraged the liberals; it made it obvious to any of the conservatives who might have been moneyhungry that the trail to the bank did not wind through Republican primaries. As Caldwell, without explaining what he means, says, “That bullet changed things pretty drastically in this state, as well as in the world, for that matter.” Last May, despite the urgings of many Republican leaders, the Republican voters could not be kept in their own primaries. Thus have we arrived at the present question. Caldwell is glad, he says, to go back to “two-party land,” because they can elect more liberals, not because of the candidates or the voters, “but because of the system.” He asks, “Do you really want a two-party system and are you willing to think and act boldly enough to have a twoparty system and a liberal Democratic Party in Texas?” EDGAR BERLIN of Beaumont, formerly a state representative, made a case for Carr to the Texas Liberal Democrats’ summer convention in Austin. He voted for Blakley, and he was not particularly proud of that, but, he said, he was proud he hadn’t voted for Tower. Those voting for Tower, he said, would be in “the same type of political position that Allan Shivers engaged in when he advocated Democrats for Eisenhower.” Berlin contended voting for Tower would not contribute to a two-party system. Under presidential pressure, he said, Carr would give the President and the Democrats some votes, while Tower would give none. Berlin reminded the liberals of the 1961 argument that Tower would be a one-termer, easyto-beat. He said Tower’s re-election would be a slap at the President. “We’ve been nice long enough,” said Janet Massey of Midlandshe’s for Tower. Moses Leroy, Houston Negro leader, said that if the Democratic organization proposed to endorse Tower, “I’d have to oppose itnot that ‘m not gonna vote for him.” Carr, getting Democratic committee assignments, might do more harm than Tower, LeRoy reasoned. Chris Dixie, the T.L.D. president, said, “If other things are equal, you vote for the two-party system. There’s no point at all voting for a two-party sys tern by voting for the Democrat if he continues to be a carbon copy of John Tower’s philosophy,” in which case, Dixie said, “we’re going to vote for John Tower, in my judgment.” But, Dixie said, if Carr “gives us reason to believe there’s a difference between them, then it’s a new ball game. What would you do if you found John Tower wanting to escalate the war and you found Waggoner Carr identifiably closer to a dove’s position?” Bob Wheeler, formerly a liberal representative, accused Carr, as Speaker of the House, of turning down the liberals every time they wanted him to help them fight S back the legislature’s 1957 segregation bills. Ed Polk, Sr., of Dallas, spoke out a point that has much weight with many Texas liberalsthat if Carr is a senator, “traditional seniority will be reversed. Senator Yarborough will merely be called senior senator.” Mike Ethridge, the brass-voiced loyal Democrat who convulses and sometimes deeply stirs gatherings he speaks to, said he’d always been a loyal Democrat, and if Tower was defeated “you are going to bury the twoparty system in -Texas and it shall never raise its head. I hope every one of you will continue to be a loyal Democrat, but never bury the two-party system.” \(And with Gray, Houston campaigner for Bob Eckhardt for Congress, charged, “Waggoner Carr came to Houston twice to campaign for Bob Eckhardt’s opponent,” Larry McKaskle. T.L.D. finally decided to say that neither Carr nor Tower represented the national principles of the Democratic Party and that nothing should be decided, and Carr should be watched. Carr has been meeting with liberals and members of minorities he can get to meet with him, arguing that from their point of view he’s not as bad as Tower. Tower has been trying to quiet the damaging reactions against his reactionary, let-’em-eat-cake remarks about the farm workers’ strike. On Vietnam, Carr had been saying good for the generals, and let’s hope for the best, and I don’t mean this but I don’t not mean it, eitherhe had been trying to get liberals’ appreciation by saying nothing in various ways, hoping that even nothing would contrast with Tower’s tomahawkery. But last week he approved the recent step-up in the bombings. WHEN THE SET of the stage is Texas, Tower’s election seems to serve progress best because it serves change best. A two-party system would result in the nomination of more liberals by the Democrats and the election of more of them than we now elect in our Novembers. Tower’s re-election would be a step toward a twoparty system here, and some liberals are now trying to talk the Republicans into contracting that if Tower gets back in, they, the Republicans, will go all-out in Republican primaries for statewide offices in the spring of 1968, thus giving the liberals a serious chance at statehouse control that November. \(Of course, if Tower lost, the Republicans would have to try to do the same thing, anyway, but with Tower in, this theory goes, they’d have a better Nor is the play just about Texas when its set is Texas, for there is the Texas delegation to be considered, and there is the ability of a conservative Democratic senator being able to entrench himself for life, whereas, by 1974, someone like Bob Eckhardt might be able to defeat Republican Tower. But six more years of Tower is not a prospect idly to be contemplated. He -has attained powerful military committee assignments, and his being a Republican senator from Texas gives him a national platform that he has already used for Goldwater’s launching pad and would use the next six years for war and more war. He is fundamentally a Goldwater extremist, and to enhance his standing in the country by giving him a second term is a very, very serious thing to do to the country and the world. The best case for Carr, among liberals, resides in his opportunism. Shifting his context ffom this state’s politics of big business to Washington’s politics of the main chance, his colors will change somewhat. Coming under direct pressure from Johnson, he will give the Democrats some votes on domestic reform, how many no one can say, but surely more than Tower would. He has given no one any reason to believe that he would do other than follow Johnson uncritically on Vietnam and similar questions, if we live so long. With liberals critical of the war, this is a minus in itself; figured against Tower’s blatant, ceaseless warmongering, it’s part of the case for Carr, but even this point for him is severely weakened by his statement last week “heartily” endorsing the bombings near Hanoi and Haiphong. Setting no limits on his support of the President in Vietnam, he is simply a me-tooer on the subject. Once in, Carr might never be got out. If Johnson chose to deal with Carr on patronage to Yarborough’s detriment, this state’s best senator in this century ‘would be hurt for re-election and in his standing with his followers. Nor, barring some improbable change of the modus operandi by Johnson by himself, would there be any hope for a two-party Texas as long as Johnson is president. The Texas Establishment is a quite real force, and its leaders make their plans in real places, at real times. They quite explicitly fear a two-party system. Governor Connally told Rea Nesmith, the architect for a University of Texas project whom Connally had nixed because Nesmith is a Republican, that there isn’t going to be a two-party system in Texas, and one naturally assumes from Carr’s associations as Speaker and attorney general and from his policies that he goes along with Connally on this. It’s a sorry choice. But it is not a simple choice, nor is there a hurry about making it. Maybe many liberal people never will make it ; there’s talk of a big fishing party, up around Buchanan Dam, next election day. R.D. July 22, 1966 3