The Republican Establishment, by Stephen Hess and David S. Broder. Harper, $7.95 For every politico, amateur or pro, this book can be an excellent primer for election year 1968. Where else can one find ten pages of print on “the national review crowd” detailing how it influences national GOP affairs? (The NR gang, say the authors, includes William F. Buckley Jr., William A. Rusher, Frank S. Meyer, Young Americans for Freedom, The American Conservative Union, Rep. John Ashbrook, most of the Young Republican National Federation and its ruling “Syndicate,” F. Clifton White, and most of the old Goldwater movement.) Bill Buckley is called an “institution” and “by all odds the pre-eminent figure of the New Right.” According to Hess and Broder, conservative Republicans come off with extremely high marks in organizational talent, political savvy and actual control of the party apparatus.
The Republican Establishment is the journalistic product of Dave Broder, chief political reporter for the Washington Post, and Steve Hess, onetime aide on President Eisenhower’s staff. The book gives a carefully detailed and usually accurate account of the Republican Party at this moment in its history, its leaders, semileaders, and power centers. The first part of the book is devoted to a complete rundown on national GOP politics, including prominent individuals in and out of Congress, the Republican National Committee, financiers, and “intellectuals, left and right.” The last third of the book deals with a regional and state-by-state analysis of local GOP politics.
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