Nation: Republicans: The Disenchanted

• Share

(2 of 2)

Back to the Store. Those who cherish the G.O.P.'s image as the party of Lincoln are also alarmed. They fear that Goldwater's managers will cynically seek to inflame Negro-white tensions in the hope that a civil rights explosion would propel their man into the White House on a tide of segregationist votes. As it is, Goldwater will get few Negro votes. "Some Negroes are Republicans because of their conservative philosophy," says Dr. Lee Shelton, Negro vice chairman of Georgia's Fulton County Republican committee, "but none are anti-Negro. That's what they're being asked to be in the Goldwater campaign."

To leaven the bitterness, anti-Goldwaterites crack wry jokes. Just before the convention began, a Republican leader snickered when asked how he would run his local campaigns with Goldwater heading the ticket. Said he: "I'll jump off that bridge when I come to it." In Chicago, stationery shops stocked a card designed for mailing to Barry. On the outside it says, "You made me what I am today," and on the inside, "... a Democrat."

To many Republican officeholders, that is no joke. New York Congressman John Lindsay said he might not vote for Goldwater because certain "principles are dear to me and I'm not going to desert them." Senator Kenneth Keating of New York indicated that he might run independently to maintain "the integrity of my beliefs." Michigan's Governor George Romney felt the same way. "Well," said he, after San Francisco, "we're going back to work just as hard as we can to assure Republican victories in Michigan." "Don't you mean Republican victories all over the U.S.?" asked a reporter. Snapped Romney: "I meant exactly what I said."