Word: panama
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...Southern Republican leaders cheered lustily last week when Ronald Reagan accused Jimmy Carter of signing a "fatally flawed" Panama Canal treaty. They applauded enthusiastically when John Connally charged that the Democrats stood for the three Rs: "retrenchment, resignation and retreat." They gave warm welcomes to Senators Howard Baker and Robert Dole. The purpose of the three-day meeting at Disney World's Contemporary Resort-Hotel at Orlando, Fla., was to discuss strategy for next year's elections. But the G.O.P. faithful eagerly took a sneak preview of 1980 by sizing up four of the many presidential candidates...
Reagan delivers up to a dozen speeches a month, writes columns twice weekly for 125 newspapers, and tapes weekly five-minute messages for 275 radio stations. His favorite targets: Big Government, Carter's Panama Canal treaty and Edward Kennedy's cradle-to-grave national health-insurance program, which Reagan describes as "the sperm-to-worm plan." At the same time, he preaches party unity to keep from scaring off Republican moderates. Says he: "Let's put an end to giving each other political saliva tests to establish the degree of our Republican purity." Says a close associate...
...Congress failed to face up to some other heavy challenges, it was not always to blame. Senator Byrd did the President a favor in postponing Senate action on ratifying the Panama Canal treaties, since the required two-thirds majority was not yet in sight. Welfare reform got bogged down in the long debate over energy. With Carter's assent, tax reform too was put off until at least next year...
...know there could be no public answers on television until the next day: to set up cameras and process and edit film took too long to make the evening news. But new technology has made instant response a fact. Carter can make a statement on energy or the Panama Canal, and by nightfall be outshouted by his critics...
...Panama seemed to be in a holiday mood last week, and indeed the country was celebrating a festival of sorts. For the more than 700,000 Panamanians who voted in a plebiscite to ratify the new canal treaties with the U.S., it was the first chance to go to the polls on any national issue since General Omar Torrijos seized power in 1968 and outlawed political parties four months later. Torrijos had encouraged political debate on the treaties in order to counter suspicions in the U.S. that the plebiscite was rigged, and he got a bit more than he bargained...