Republicans: No Comfort for Birchers

"Everybody's already read out the Birchers," snapped Arizona's John Rhodes, chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee. "Why should we have to take the oath every time we come up to bat?" Other G.O.P. congressional leaders agreed. On the road back from the 1964 Republican National Convention, many party chieftains have exorcised the bugaboo of "extremism." Yet when the party's nine-month-old coordinating committee met in Washington last week, moderate Republican Governors, led by Idaho's Bob Smylie, insisted that the leadership should collectively and specifically condemn the John Birch Society.

Instead, after a brief behind-the-scenes tussle between the Governors and the more conservative Capitol Hill leaders, the policy group decided in the interest of party unity to adopt a diplomatic resolution based on an earlier statement by National Committee Chairman Ray Bliss. It urged all Republicans to "reject membership in any radical or extremist organization, including any which attempts to use the Republican Party for its own ends or any which seeks to undermine the basic principles of American freedom and constitutional government."

Did this include the Birch Society? None of the committeemen would say so—at first. Then Birch Publicist John Rousselot crowed in San Marino, Calif., that it was "wise of the Republican Party to make clear that it doesn't seem to be influenced by extremist groups, such as the Communist Party or the Ku Klux Klan." At which, Wisconsin Representative Melvin Laird told his colleagues: "Let's quit monkeying around. No more hedging, damn it. The answer is yes." And so, by the end of the day, committee members were once again reading out the Birchers.