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Analyses of what went wrong, even long, agonizing weeks of them, can be useful if they teach us something we didn’t know before. Nixon’s hairline defeat, however, is not in that category. The election was in doubt up to the last because the religious vote was in doubt up to the last. But the rest of the picture was clearly in focus, as a restatement of the two main Republican limitations shows.

The first had to do with the weakness of the party itself, with its inability to grow either in voters or in the element that creates voters— devoted organization workers. The party had been a thirty-year cripple, and the ailment was organic. Ever since 1928 the GOP, for all practical purposes, had been “out of it” on a national scale, the victories of Eisenhower being—victories of Eisenhower. The trouble, essentially, was that the party lost its nerve during the Roosevelt Revolution, and never really regained it. This intimidation was understandable in the convulsive days of the thirties when the drastic new programs and charismatic leadership of the Democratic Party shook away huge voters’ blocs from their traditional Republican moorings. But after things settled down, the complex remained. Republicans were still unwilling to open any real daylight between their public position and the Democrats’ for fear of being swept under again. They were, of course, swept under anyway. But after each election they were advised by the learned commentators that things would have been worse if they had shown their true colors; and they believed it.

LB

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L. Brent Bozell Jr.

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Republican Party

Analyses of what went wrong, even long, agonizing weeks of them, can be useful if they teach us something we didn’t know before. Nixon’s hairline defeat, however, is not in that category. The election was in doubt up to the last because the religious vote was in doubt up to the last. But the rest of the picture was clearly in focus, as a restatement of the two main Republican limitations shows.

The first had to do with the weakness of the party itself, with its inability to grow either in voters or in the element that creates voters— devoted organization workers. The party had been a thirty-year cripple, and the ailment was organic. Ever since 1928 the GOP, for all practical purposes, had been “out of it” on a national scale, the victories of Eisenhower being—victories of Eisenhower. The trouble, essentially, was that the party lost its nerve during the Roosevelt Revolution, and never really regained it. This intimidation was understandable in the convulsive days of the thirties when the drastic new programs and charismatic leadership of the Democratic Party shook away huge voters’ blocs from their traditional Republican moorings. But after things settled down, the complex remained. Republicans were still unwilling to open any real daylight between their public position and the Democrats’ for fear of being swept under again. They were, of course, swept under anyway. But after each election they were advised by the learned commentators that things would have been worse if they had shown their true colors; and they believed it.