The Week

Rumor has it that the 1980 Democratic Convention will be held in Dallas, erstwhile City of Dreadful Night, Assassination Central, to which JFK went because his managers told him he needed Texas. Dallas, the only place in the nation that voted more heavily than Orange County for Barry Goldwater. Why, of all places, are the Democrats thinking of Dallas? Well, because in 1976 Carter rotted west of the Mississippi, ran strongly in the South, won by a hair in Texas, and squeaked into the Oval Office with what he could add from the East. In 1980, as Democratic strategists see it, Carter looks strong in the District of Columbia and Rhode Island, that’s about it, and to have any sort of prayer must carry Texas, just for starters, Texas, which, as of now, he’d lose to the Ayatollah. Therefore a Dallas Convention, a lot of splash, and perhaps some good local PR; and hope, and hope.

Speaker Tip O’Neill, pausing from his depredations in Washington for yet another European junket, offered the British some curbstone views on Ulster. The British had made a “political football” of it, said the statesman from Massachusetts. Then Governor Hugh Carey of New York suggested that economic sanctions be employed against Britain if it doesn’t pull its troops out of Ulster. These sirloin-faced pols instantly united Dublin, London, Labor, Conservative, Callaghan, and Thatcher in a loud chorus: shut up, clowns.

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House of Representatives

William F. Buckley Jr.

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Rumor has it that the 1980 Democratic Convention will be held in Dallas, erstwhile City of Dreadful Night, Assassination Central, to which JFK went because his managers told him he needed Texas. Dallas, the only place in the nation that voted more heavily than Orange County for Barry Goldwater. Why, of all places, are the Democrats thinking of Dallas? Well, because in 1976 Carter rotted west of the Mississippi, ran strongly in the South, won by a hair in Texas, and squeaked into the Oval Office with what he could add from the East. In 1980, as Democratic strategists see it, Carter looks strong in the District of Columbia and Rhode Island, that’s about it, and to have any sort of prayer must carry Texas, just for starters, Texas, which, as of now, he’d lose to the Ayatollah. Therefore a Dallas Convention, a lot of splash, and perhaps some good local PR; and hope, and hope.

Speaker Tip O’Neill, pausing from his depredations in Washington for yet another European junket, offered the British some curbstone views on Ulster. The British had made a “political football” of it, said the statesman from Massachusetts. Then Governor Hugh Carey of New York suggested that economic sanctions be employed against Britain if it doesn’t pull its troops out of Ulster. These sirloin-faced pols instantly united Dublin, London, Labor, Conservative, Callaghan, and Thatcher in a loud chorus: shut up, clowns.