Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 5 · column 2 of 4 · from the scan, no model involved
mass meetings were all over, thus giving the prospective nominees the luxury of two long months to start preparing their general election campaigns.
It was an admirable theory, so I thought, when first explained to me in detail. But, as Henny Youngman might say, a funny thing happened on the way to the convention. Namely that none of the candidates — I repeat none — who have been running for the various nominations have been willing to concede and all apparently plan to carry the fight all the way to the convention floor.
This means that though the mass meetings are over and the 14,000 or so delegates selected, and though I believe it is reasonable to assume that a couple of likely convention winners can be projected on the basis of information available, the battle is nevertheless being joined every day.
From what I am told delegates are being pounded with phone calls and letters from the various camps and that friction between those camps has not lessened but if anything increased dramatically in the month of April.
Thus the compressed mass meeting process ostensibly designed to leave time for healing wounds has simply provided identification of targets-delegates-for renewed propaganda campaigns. The unintended consequence may well be such bitter fighting that the GOP statewide nominees leave the convention facing hostile Democrats to their front and hostile Republicans to their backs. And without the kind of party unity in statewide elections they haven’t demonstrated since 1977, the Republicans could face yet another electoral disaster.
(Editor’s note: John Goolrick, a former political reporter, is now an aide to 1st District Rep. Herbert Bateman. Opinions expressed are his own and not necessarily those of this newspaper.)
94.0%