ustxtxb_obs_1968_08_23_50_00016-00000_000.pdf

had a dramatic effect on the affairs of the Democratic party and our nation as well? And the Rockefeller effort some effect in moderating the Republican Party? Another question: Why is it that those who favor McCarthy must hate Humphrey and those who favor Humphrey must hate McCarthy? I feel, as does Sen. George McGovern, that both of these men have made great contributions and the one who is nominated deserves support of all citizens desiring progress. One more question: Is not the economic and political example we set here in the United States the greatest contribution we make to world progress? Walter Lippman has made this point in criticizing Lyndon Johnson and Charles De Gaulle for their efforts in attempting to reform the affairs of other nations. I believe to be a good “international liberal” we must put ourselves to the tasks of solving the crying problems in our cities, our states and our nationin other words, by being a good “domestic liberal.” So the central and compelling question for bosses and non-bosses is: who should be supported, the Republican nominee or the Democratic nominee? This is the decision that requires our immediate attention. Building a better party must wait until after Nov. 5. Roy R. Evans, secretary-treasurer, Texas AFL-CIO, 308 W. 1 1 th, Austin, Tex. 78711. 16 The Texas Observer Merry Christmas Let’s look at that spoor while the scent of Hubert Humphrey is still strong on the prairie. After a little correspondence over Vietnam a few years ago, I had the bad tact to write Hubert off. But even as the war became more vicious, each year his Christmas cards arrived punctually stiff with white formality, engraved like steel, and as welcome in that season as a dog shit in the mail. Last year my letter telling him to leave off brought the Secret Service pounding on my door at night with the threat of a federal indictment. The related constitutional issues don’t belong here. But though I still send them back, the Christmas cards still come. You could almost think the man needs to be president only to press such things home. And though you at the Observer have dismissed Vietnam \(with how much else, edged cards, backed by the secret police, tell more for the future than the hail of steel darts tearing flesh from bone in that miserable country. Have a nice Christmas, and enjoy your new freedom from care. C. D. Di Giambattista, Box 789, Midland, Tex. 79701. McCarthyites for Nixon? Shades of the crossoverism that has given Texas Senator Tower, there was some talk at the Dissident Democrat strategy meeting [recently in Austin] of McCarthyites working for Nixon if the national convention fails to register their voice. The argument favoring such a plan assumes that . . . a President Nixon .. . would face the unleashed orneriness of a Democratic senate bent upon checking or hampering his tendency to continue or intensify the executive ferocity in Southeast Asia. .. . . . . There is another, more temperate and perhaps more effective way to bring our own party to heel. It is to promise to work to deliver the Republicans a house majority by 1970 if the Democrats don’t shape up and if Mr. Humphrey does not begin very soon to look more benignly over the water. Such a promise, if we have any potential to fulfill it, would hit old-line “liberalism” where it lives: If the doctrinaire Humphrey were elected, his prime domestic function would be to produce jobs and raise incomes. . . . Such a performance requires, more than anything, the cheerful cooperation of the house. Nothing could ring down the curtain faster than a niggardly Republican house appropriations committee. In Texas, of course, liberal support for a Republican house need not be entirely negative, a hard swing right to produce the desired leftish slide. We are tumbling to the fact at last that conservatives here are too powerfully ensconced in the comfort of the state’s Democratic party to be moved, and that if anyone is going to shift nominal ground, it may have to be the liberals. A good active, positive transition would be the work of fielding a team of registered-Republican representative candidates for 1970, men capable of forming a congressional foundation for, say, a Lindsay attempt at the White House in later years, or of coalescing with right-thinking politicians of either patty to support a second McCarthy run in ’72. John F. Withey, East Texans for McCarthy, 122 Carolyn, Nacogdoches, Tex. Third Party Needed . . . I suggest that the Rebuilding Cornmittee has selected the wrong target…. I believe the target should be Texas liberalism itself [which] is not competent to deal with its own. situation. . . . I fear that the worst possible thing for Texas liberalism today would be victory. As a movement it is unprepared to assume power. . . . We so often praise and take encouragement from the growing “liberal” contingent in the state legislature, yet notice how many of these mainstays of the left supported Smith and Barnes, or at best chose to remain silent in the race. The most liberal candidate statewide, Don Gladden, was largely ignored by the liberal establishment. The state of that erstwhile organization, Texas Liberal Democrats, is further evidence of the condition affecting the Texas dissidents. . . . And the fact that the anti-Connally drive in the state conventions depended so much on pro-Humphrey union support is a telling indication that there is no true left in Texas. The most hopeful prospects for the future of liberalism in the state is the small but concerned minority of truly leftist college students and young people. The Rag \(Austin’s underground example, fills the void that the Observer should endeavor to fill. . . . It will be good to have a separate party establishment created along the lines of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic party. But, alas, this liberal faction will be no better than moderate itself. Perhaps a better answer would be a permanent third party along the lines of the Texas Liberal party. . . . [H]opefully many parts of the country are anxious for a new party to the left of the Democrats, to the left of the party of Eastland, Stennis, Connally, Smith, and Jackson, and for a party where in the desires of the people rather than the desires of the machine . . . will decide the nominees and the direction of the party. . . . Charles W. Stephenson, 726 Westwood Dr., San Antonio, Tex. 78212. Kennedyites, Back McCarthy . . . I would like to ask the Kennedy people who are now courting Humphrey just why the heck did they want to talk Kennedy into the race only now to back off from his policies and his dreams for this nation and this world? . . . We who loved Robert Kennedy know that McCarthy is the one for us now. . . .Nell Herrin, 7146 . Timber Ridge, San Antonio, Tex. 78227.