For the Record

■ The Republican National Committee received a record 423,000 contributions totaling $24 million in July 1996—compared to 410,000 contributions during the entire year in 1992, and a previous one-month record of $14 million in October 1992. . . . Republicans turn up the heat on Bill Clinton for not releasing his medical records. Republicans are thought to be looking for evidence of treatment for venereal disease. . . . Clinton tells 60 Minutes, “I’m willing to pledge right now that I, I have no intention of raising taxes”—eerily similar wording to pledge he made in October 1992. . . . Press secretary Michael McCurry on the fallout from the welfare bill: “If the President has to live without the support of the National Organization of Women in the coming election, he’ll just have to pay that price.” . . . Betting men: Longtime conservative activist Donald Devine writes, using first person plural, that “victory is in the bag for Mr. Dole. And we take our predictions seriously. We were the first, on Nov. 22, 1994, to predict Bill Clinton’s rejuvenation if the Republicans tried to govern from Congress, and we do not make prognostications lightly.” GOP strategist James Pinkerton tells New York, “I’ll make a flat proposition. We’ll never elect another pro-life President.”

■ Third-party woes: K. B. Forbes, former press aide to Pat Buchanan, steps down as communications director of U.S. Taxpayers Party, saying, “I’m outta here. Some of these people are crazy.” In a letter to presidential nominee Howard Phillips, he wrote that the party’s convention “has attracted—what I believe to be—the rudest and most mentally unstable wannabe political activists and ‘media’ in the country.” . . . Among the “voting problems” in Ross Perot’s Reform Party: Richard Lamm and his daughter, Heather, did not receive ballots and were not allowed to vote until Perot interceded. . . . Alexander Cockburn laments the passage of the welfare bill in The Nation: “A Democratic President has just declared that this opportunity to kick women and children into the snow cannot be passed up, has destroyed a big chunk of the New Deal, and not one major Democratic figure has defected.” Cockburn also wishes The Nation would “abandon its childish Dole-prickings, like ‘Was Dole really a war hero?’ Come on, guys, the man got wounded badly while engaged with the enemy. It was even a ‘good’ war. How many more of these articles are in the pipeline? ‘Bob Dole: Just How Mauled Is That Hand?’ ‘Elizabeth Dole: Does She Cheat at Bridge?’ ”

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Presidential Election

■ The Republican National Committee received a record 423,000 contributions totaling $24 million in July 1996—compared to 410,000 contributions during the entire year in 1992, and a previous one-month record of $14 million in October 1992. . . . Republicans turn up the heat on Bill Clinton for not releasing his medical records. Republicans are thought to be looking for evidence of treatment for venereal disease. . . . Clinton tells 60 Minutes, “I’m willing to pledge right now that I, I have no intention of raising taxes”—eerily similar wording to pledge he made in October 1992. . . . Press secretary Michael McCurry on the fallout from the welfare bill: “If the President has to live without the support of the National Organization of Women in the coming election, he’ll just have to pay that price.” . . . Betting men: Longtime conservative activist Donald Devine writes, using first person plural, that “victory is in the bag for Mr. Dole. And we take our predictions seriously. We were the first, on Nov. 22, 1994, to predict Bill Clinton’s rejuvenation if the Republicans tried to govern from Congress, and we do not make prognostications lightly.” GOP strategist James Pinkerton tells New York, “I’ll make a flat proposition. We’ll never elect another pro-life President.”

■ Third-party woes: K. B. Forbes, former press aide to Pat Buchanan, steps down as communications director of U.S. Taxpayers Party, saying, “I’m outta here. Some of these people are crazy.” In a letter to presidential nominee Howard Phillips, he wrote that the party’s convention “has attracted—what I believe to be—the rudest and most mentally unstable wannabe political activists and ‘media’ in the country.” . . . Among the “voting problems” in Ross Perot’s Reform Party: Richard Lamm and his daughter, Heather, did not receive ballots and were not allowed to vote until Perot interceded. . . . Alexander Cockburn laments the passage of the welfare bill in The Nation: “A Democratic President has just declared that this opportunity to kick women and children into the snow cannot be passed up, has destroyed a big chunk of the New Deal, and not one major Democratic figure has defected.” Cockburn also wishes The Nation would “abandon its childish Dole-prickings, like ‘Was Dole really a war hero?’ Come on, guys, the man got wounded badly while engaged with the enemy. It was even a ‘good’ war. How many more of these articles are in the pipeline? ‘Bob Dole: Just How Mauled Is That Hand?’ ‘Elizabeth Dole: Does She Cheat at Bridge?’ ”