Word: agnew
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...then, would John Connally, a proud man and a powerful Democrat, now decide to sit in Richard Nixon's Cabinet-unless there was more in it for him than met the eye? There was speculation that the President is positioning Connally as a possible replacement for Spiro Agnew in 1972. So far, that is nothing more than guesswork. Besides, such a plot would require a party switch by Connally, and Texans generally prefer to fight rather than switch. It would cost Connally dearly back home. "I did not seek this job," Connally told friends. "It's just hard...
...Governors had some understandable reservations about their party's campaign strategy. Last week, at the semiannual G.O.P. Governors' Conference at Idaho's Sun Valley resort, they got a chance to question one of the campaign's prime architects and its loudest voice: Vice President Spiro Agnew. He journeyed to the meeting, Agnew said, "to consult with my brothers and if necessary, to debate them, and if convinced by logic, to make changes." His brothers, for the most part, found him a good deal more willing to debate than to change...
Speaking to the Governors on the night of his arrival, Agnew provided his most candid analysis to date of the Republicans' fortunes last November. He did not dwell on the victories. Instead, Agnew sought to dissociate himself from the losses. "The causes of victory or defeat in a political election are as opaque and indefinable after as before the vote," he said. As for charges that his steel-studded rhetoric during the campaign was a divisive weapon, Agnew declared, "Nothing is more unreasonable to me. What is an election if it is not an attempt to divide the voters...
Reagan's Tactic. For those Governors who had hoped that Sun Valley's blanket of snow might cool off Agnew's language, that was too much. Fumed Oregon's Tom McCall, who had earlier urged President Nixon to consider candidates other than Agnew for the 1972 ticket: "There was the most unbelievable, incredible misunderstanding of the mood of America in that rotten, bigoted little speech." Other Governors labeled it simply "defensive." By the time that Agnew sat down to a closed-door breakfast with 21 of the Governors, as he later put it in an understatement...
...loudest complaint voiced against the Vice President was about his habit of attacking political enemies personally. The critics ranged from Iowa's moderate Robert Ray. who urged Agnew to adopt a positive tone, to California's conservative Ronald Reagan, who suggested that the Vice President dodge inflammatory statements about individuals. If necessary, said Reagan, the Vice President could always claim that he had not read a provocative speech or statement and therefore could not comment on it. Oklahoma's conservative Dewey Bartlett reminded the Vice President that he had been personally-and unsuccessfully-asked not to criticize...