Word: rayburnisms
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...committee threw a huge affair at the National Gallery to welcome Bess Truman, the Cabinet wives, the Kennedy and Johnson ladies, and other women of importance; the hall became a rustling sea of mink and jewel, bouffant hairdo and beaded gown. Over at the Statler-Hilton, House Speaker Sam Rayburn hosted a party for Lyndon Johnson; at the Mayflower, Young Democrats danced with anxious glances at the entrance, hoping for the arrival of Jack Kennedy. He did not show-but Brother Bobby and his wife Ethel saved the day. Hour after hour, top names turned up at parties given...
Dedication. The ceremony moved on: Lyndon Baines Johnson rose, raised his right hand and took the oath, administered, at his request, by his friend, mentor and fellow Texan, Sam Rayburn. Poet Robert Frost, his white hair fluttering in the wind, tried to read a newly written dedication to his famed poem, "The Gift Outright." But the bright sun blinded the old (86) New Englander, the wind whipped the paper in his hands, and he faltered. In the front row, Jackie Kennedy snapped up her head in concern. Lyndon Johnson leaped to shade Frost's paper with...
Saved-Up lOUs. Judge Smith's defeat was the combined work of Texas' Speaker Sam Rayburn, 79, no liberal, and Missouri's Richard Boiling, 44, leader of the House's "pragmatic liberals" (so called to distinguish them from the "bomb-throwing liberals" like California's Jimmy Roosevelt). Leathery Sam Rayburn, who became a Congressman in 1913, before Richard Boiling (or John F. Kennedy) was born, is immune to ideological itches, felt none of the liberal urge to topple Judge Smith. But Rayburn is a damn-the-infidels Democrat, and during last August's postscript...
...Rayburn decided to add three new members-two Democrats and one Republican-to the committee, bringing the membership up to 15 (ten Democrats, five Republicans). If the two new Democrats were men who would go along at Rayburn's bidding-and Mister Sam would see to that-the change would drastically curb Smith's power. In the past, Smith formed a bloc with the committee's four Republicans, plus Mississippi's conservative William M. Colmer. Since nearly all major bills require a positive O.K. from the Rules Committee before they can come to the House floor...
Smith refused to go along with Rayburn's plan, set about marshaling Southerners for battle. But Missouri's Boiling was doing some marshaling, too. A hard-thinking strategist and Rayburn's straw-boss member of the Rules Committee, Boiling had started preparing for the battle months ahead of time. He had saved up as ammunition all the lOUs that he had collected last autumn for helping Democratic House candidates while he was serving as the Kennedy-picked chairman of the committee to coordinate congressional and presidential campaigns. Making use of the detailed information in a fellow liberal...