The Week

Couldn’t we move Israel to North Vietnam and let Nasser blockade the harbor at Haiphong?

This year’s Young Republican National Federation convention (Omaha, June 17-21) will see yet another liberal v. conservative contention for the national chairmanship—a post in conservative hands since 1963. The liberals seem to have learned little about political maneuvering in their years of outhood, witness their latest effort: a poll of Republican leaders being circulated by one E. John Bucci, a self-proclaimed surveyor of public opinion. Bucci asks a pageful of leading questions about the role of the YRNF in GOP affairs—not, be it noted, about the role of the state and local YR groups that do most of the day-to-day political spadework. The whistle has been blown on the whole operation by Rep. Donald Lukens (R., Ohio), a former YRNF national chairman, who notes that “the questions are phrased to most easily accommodate negative opinions about — the .. . National Federation.” Nobody seems to know just which Republican leaders are being polled—but YRNF insiders suspect the worst, and predict that the results will be hawked to the press on the eve of the convention. One more suspicion: Bucci operates out of Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, leading many to detect the clumsy hand of that state’s antiRepublican Republican Senator Hugh Scott.

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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Couldn’t we move Israel to North Vietnam and let Nasser blockade the harbor at Haiphong?

This year’s Young Republican National Federation convention (Omaha, June 17-21) will see yet another liberal v. conservative contention for the national chairmanship—a post in conservative hands since 1963. The liberals seem to have learned little about political maneuvering in their years of outhood, witness their latest effort: a poll of Republican leaders being circulated by one E. John Bucci, a self-proclaimed surveyor of public opinion. Bucci asks a pageful of leading questions about the role of the YRNF in GOP affairs—not, be it noted, about the role of the state and local YR groups that do most of the day-to-day political spadework. The whistle has been blown on the whole operation by Rep. Donald Lukens (R., Ohio), a former YRNF national chairman, who notes that “the questions are phrased to most easily accommodate negative opinions about — the .. . National Federation.” Nobody seems to know just which Republican leaders are being polled—but YRNF insiders suspect the worst, and predict that the results will be hawked to the press on the eve of the convention. One more suspicion: Bucci operates out of Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, leading many to detect the clumsy hand of that state’s antiRepublican Republican Senator Hugh Scott.