Word: gop
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...orchestra launched into "I've been working on the railroad" on a number of occasions, presumably because if Reagan gets elected, the trains will run on time. But for the GOP to have such a united convention last week, there must have been a unifying factor, one thing that caused ultra-conservatives like Jesse Helms and moderates like George Bush and Henry Kissinger to abandon their "principles." That factor was the person of Ronald Reagan, a sincere, likeable, even comforting figure. Wherever he appeared, he conveyed a personal air of respectability and pleasantness...
...Reagan's manner and style reassure, and he symbolizes hope in a time of despair. But his form is not connected with his substantive stands on the crucial issues facing the country, any more than the iresponsible GOP platform that emerged from Detroit last week...
...FURTHER THE COMMON CAUSE of reoccuping the White House, the GOP was willing to put its differences of four years ago behind it. The nearly consummated Reagan-Ford marriage would have provided the Republicans with an imposing, if not unbeatable, team. While several observers Wednesday night wondered whether the drawn-out back room bargaining was evidence of Reagan's indecision, others speculated the excitement-- like everything else here--may have been deliberately staged in the former California governor's finest dramatic tradition. Reagan's eventual withdrawal of concessions to Ford, while perhaps in the best interest of the presidential office...
Even the choice of George Bush, merely one in a long parade of former Reagan adversaries who chose not to disagree with the GOP's candidate or its platform this week, should not prove significant. A second choice, Bush will probably parrot Reagan rhetoric since his positions during his own campaign were no less simplistic than Reagan's. Bush, too, will be drenched in the "populist" flood of conservatism...
...opinion of GOP moderates anathema to conservatives? In an atmosphere of reaction, tacitly strengthened by public sentiment, it is. And as the moderates--who pose the greatest threat to rigid conservatism--are co-opted by this convention, the country's future dims. Amid the anti-Carter rhetoric that can carry the November election, there must be some strands of reason, some sign that conservatives are not uncompromising. This week in Detroit, there have been no such indications. Maybe that's why conservatives sport smiles wide than Carter's 1976 grin. The roots of the slogan, "Together--A New Beginning...