ustxtxb_obs_1983_11_25_50_00018-00000_000.pdf

elections. That credit belongs to shifting demographics, the influx of Yankee Republicans of the managerial and technocratic class and several failures in the John Hill campaign. organization. Nevertheless, and regardless of how it came about, there was simply no other way to alter the political landscape in what had been the largest one-party state in the country without the sacrifice of electing a Republican Governor. \(And I %lust what we need on the eve of 1984: a comprehensive assessment of the Reagan record, written with punch and style LJAMES MacGREGOR BURNS “Ronnie Dugger cites chapter and verse in his bizarre saga of Ronnie Reagan, President…. A powerful antidote to the mass lobotomy of public and press that, at the moment, possesses us.”STUDS TERKEL “At last someone has done for Reagan what Ronnie Dugger used to do for Texas every month in the Texas Observer. Tell the awful truth.” VICTOR NAVASKY “Dugger gets Ronald Reagan pat and down cold. All his duplicities and actions, so well covered up by a Good Guy image, will be of no avail after thinking people read what Ronnie Dugger has revealed.”LARRY L. KING “ON REAGAN is a deeply researched, keenly analyzed indictment of the false and dangerous values of our plastic President.” RAMSEY CLARK “This is a solid and massive trove of information … drawing on sources including Reagan’s generally unavailable radio broadcasts of the late 1970s…. An astute analysis.” Publishers Weekly “Read it. Recommend it. Pass it on. ON REAGAN can help us prevent 1984 from turning into 1984.”ROBERT SHERRILL Just Published / Illustrated with photographs / $19.95 at your bookstore now iin li bicGRAW-HILL83 Clements’ victory accomplished was to change the primary election voting habits of several hundred thousand Texas conservative voters who had always voted in the Democratic Primary. With the election of the first Republican Governor in a hundred years, they were persuaded that voting in the GOP primary was a meaningful political act and that all of the action wasn’t in the Democratic primary. My prediction is that the vote in the 1984 Texas GOP primary will be in the neighborhood of 350,000, and that because of this Lloyd Doggett will win the Democratic nomination and become the next U.S. Senator from Texas. Had Paul Eggers defeated Preston Smith in the 1968 general election, as the Rebuilding Committee advocated, is there anyone who doubts that Ralph Yarborough would have been renominated in the 1970 Democratic primary? As it was, he lost to Lloyd Bentsen because, as usual, all of the conservatives were voting in the Democratic primary. In closing, may I make two points: First, it is impossible to intelligently discuss the impact of Tower’s victory over Blakely in the 1961 special election for the U.S. Senate without taking note of the fact that but one year later, in 1962, the GOP primary increased to 118,000 votes. Prior to 1962, the alltime high in a Texas GOP primary was the 17,000 votes cast in 1958, and in 1960, the Texas Republican Party didn’t even hold a primary election. It was that increase in the size of the GOP primary from 17,000 in 1958 to 118,000 in 1962, but one year after Tower became the first Republican to hold any statewide office in Texas since Reconstruction that allowed Don Yarborough to come within 26,000 votes of defeating John Connally and all of his millions in the 1962 gubernatorial runoff. Parenthetically, may I suggest that it is simply impossible to deal intelligently with this entire issue without pulling out your back issues of The Texas Almanac for the last two decades and noting the size of the Republican primary every two years and the resulting impact on the outcome of the Democratic primary. Finally, it shall forever stick in my craw that in 1962, the editor of The Texas Observer, one Willie Morris, endorsed the Democratic nominee for Governor, John Connally, over Republican Jack Cox. Those who call themselves liberals and who voted for Connally over Cox in 1962, or for Preston Smith over Paul Eggers in 1968 and 1970, insured the defeat of mainstream Democrats throughout the years 18 NOVEMBER 25, 1983