Posted on 03/14/2009 6:27:48 AM PDT by yongin
Conservatives who object to moderate Republican officeholders have over the years asked themselves how far they are prepared to go to rid themselves of their intraparty rivals. In the case of California’s senator Thomas Kuchel, the answer was: very far indeed.
Kuchel (pronounced “kee-kul”) was among the last of the California progressives, politicians who had been decisively influenced by the middle-class, moral reform movement of the early twentieth century and leading progressive figures including Republican governors Hiram Johnson and Earl Warren. A key progressive reform, which was still in existence when Kuchel first was elected to the California State Assembly in 1936, was the practice of cross-filing, which allowed candidates to compete in any party primary regardless of party affiliation. Cross-filing weakened party power and favored moderates with wide appeal such as Kuchel and his mentor Earl Warren, who in the 1946 gubernatorial primaries won the nominations of both the Democratic and Republican parties. California’s nonpartisan political culture required successful officeholders to base policies on factual analysis and justify them with concrete results. Lacking the safety net of ideology and party support, politicians were forced to negotiate with constituencies outside the usual party interests. This meant that Democrats had to broker compromises acceptable to management as well as labor, and Republicans had to act to improve social welfare. The tradition of pragmatic moderation persisted in the California Republican Party even after the abolition of cross-filing in 1959, and Kuchel was an exemplar of the kind of Republican the tradition produced.
Kuchel served in state elective and appointive office from 1937 until 1953, when Warren appointed him to the U.S. Senate to replace newly-elected Vice President Richard Nixon. He was elected to the Senate in his own right in 1956, and reelected in 1962, when he became the last U.S. Senate nominee to win all of California’s 58 counties. He was a highly effective lawmaker who was also popular with his Senate Republican colleagues, and was elected a record five times as Minority Whip.
Kuchel was a strong fiscal conservative, outspoken in his opposition to what he considered Congress’ irresponsible and inflationary back-door spending on public programs. A staunch anti-Communist and generally hawkish, he called for continued American intervention in Vietnam even after the 1968 Tet Offensive. However, he raised conservative hackles with his support of Democrat-sponsored measures such as the atomic test ban treaty, his role as co-manager on the Senate floor for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and by bringing into politics young activists such as Leon Panetta (legislative assistant to Kuchel and currently Barack Obama’s head of the CIA). Of particular offense was Kuchel’s leading role in passing Lyndon Johnson’s Medicare legislation. “Progressive Republicans brought to politics the philosophy of governing for the many,” Kuchel later recalled. “If it weren’t for Medicare today, there would be tens of thousands of Americans living in the poorhouse, with no care. It was a baker’s dozen progressive Republicans in the Senate who agreed we would vote for Medicare. … I was their spokesman, and we provided the necessary margin for passage.”
What cinched the conservative case against Kuchel, however, was his public criticism of the extreme anti-Communist group The John Birch Society, which became a formidable force in California’s conservative Republican circles in the early 1960s. Shortly after John F. Kennedy’s election, Kuchel’s office began to receive thousands of letters alleging that Chinese Communists were massing in Mexico and preparing to invade the United States. When he responded that there was no military evidence for this claim, the Birchers labeled him a “Comsymp” and suggested that he was guilty of treason. “Treason!” Kuchel exclaimed in a much-publicized 1961 speech in the Senate. “I still cannot believe my eyes when I stare at the ugliest word in the American lexicon tossed about in a letter as casually as the ‘Dear Senator’ or ‘Dear Congressman’ salutation…” Referring to the Society’s efforts to impeach Supreme Court Justice Warren, and their leader Robert Welch’s claim that Dwight Eisenhower was “a conscious, dedicated agent of the communist conspiracy,” Kuchel insisted that “The big lie, the smear and witch hunts are not the hallmarks of conservatism, but are the trademarks of communism and fascism.”
His conservative enemies responded by circulating a phony affidavit alleging that the Senator had been arrested for homosexual acts. Kuchel, who was a happily married man with a daughter, knew that this was a ruinous rumor, but that the publicity that would be caused by fighting it could be equally ruinous. He chose to proceed with a libel action nonetheless, which resulted in a no-contest plea from four perpetrators, one of whom was PR assistant to Patrick Frawley Jr., a leading financial backer of conservative causes and politicians. Frawley’s assistant admitted to the police that “We did it to get rid of Kuchel.”
The arrests placed Ronald Reagan, California’s Republican gubernatorial nominee in the 1966 elections, in a delicate position, since he didn’t want to alienate his conservative devotees but also wanted to disassociate himself from the anti-Kuchel smear. He wrote to one of Kuchel’s advisors to insist that he had played no part in “the despicable acts to blacken his name,” apologized for having supported Kuchel’s opponent in the 1962 primary, and offered to work with Kuchel on the Senator’s efforts to establish the Redwood National Park (which passed Congress with Reagan’s support in 1968).
Other conservatives were not so generous. Activist Howard Jarvis (later the leader of the successful anti-tax movement that enacted California’s Proposition 13 in 1978) called for Kuchel’s defeat, proclaiming that “if we’re going to elect a liberal to any office in the United States, it better be a Democrat. ... Then when they do the things that they are going to do in this state, they get the blame for it.” The Los Angeles County Young Republicans passed a resolution declaring Kuchel “a Republican in name only,” years before that particular epithet gained common currency. This was an exaggerated charge to make against a moderate who had a record of voting with a majority of the GOP on 78% of all roll call votes, essentially the same percentage as the Senate Republican leader Everett Dirksen. Nonetheless, Kuchel lost the 1968 primary to the right-wing school superintendent Max Rafferty, whose campaign was heavily bankrolled by conservative moneymen. Rafferty then was swamped in the general election by the liberal Democrat Alan Cranston, who remained in office for almost a quarter century.
The Republican Party treated Kuchel as a pariah for the rest of his life. Instead of being regarded as an effective and pragmatic lawmaker or honored as an elder statesman, he was held up as an example of the fate that would befall any Republican who dared to stand up against the far right, no matter how ridiculous its behavior. Given that California has not elected a Republican senator since 1988, however, it may be time to examine Kuchel’s lessons of how to win in the nation’s largest state rather than continuing to emphasize the dictum of “no enemies on the right.”
No.
California tends to be the LIBERAL (read that, RINO) wing of the Republican party.
And, yongin, true Conservatives (not the PRETENDERS that lurk on Free Republic, and infest and degrade our party elsewhere), yes, even those that live in the South and believe in God (heaven forbid!) are NOT the problem.
If you are not both socially AND fiscally Conservative, then you are most assuredly, NOT a CONSERVATIVE.
I just noticed that you preceded your post with "HollywoodBill wrote:".
I posted this piece to show what RINOs at David Frum’s site are thinking. The old cliche about keeping your foes closer than friends.
Kuchel was obviously better than the two Senators who replaced him, Boxer and Cranston.
“Kuchel was obviously better than the two senators who replaced him...Boxer and Cranston.” Ah yes. The “lesser of two evils” philosophy which has passed for actual THOUGHT in the republican party. After all, Specter would be better than a democrat, huh? And McCain would have been better than Hussein, although in either case we’d be up to our eyes in government handouts and illegal aliens. Maybe JUST ONCE we can support a conservative...an actual, real conservative, rather than be lead by the well-he-would-be-better-than crowd. I mean, heck, Hussein is better than...help me out here...Stalin?
yes, Hussien is better than Stalin.
So far.
What is the problem here ? Kuchel WAS a liberal Republican and a disciple of two of the most divisive left-wingers ever to come out of California, Hiram Johnson and the execrable radical Earl Warren, who quite literally lost his mind while serving as Chief Justice, and quite deservedly should’ve been removed from the bench for gross abuse of office (Ike’s self-admitted most regrettable choice to have been put on SCOTUS).
Max Rafferty himself was a statewide elected official (Supt of Education) and beat Kuchel fair and square, but the RINO liberal scum all cast their votes for the far-left moonbat Cranston in ‘68. It is also worth pointing out the kinds of people that worked for Kuchel, including a young Republican named Leon Panetta, who soon became a Democrat. Panetta is a Kuchelite and no friend of Conservatives or REAL Moderates.
It’s an old RINO trick. Punish the conservatives by voting ‘RAT.
It really bothers be that liberals (even far left super RINOs) are called “moderate”. Or “fiscally conservative” and “socially moderate” even when they are liberals on both.
Norm Coleman is an example of a actual ‘moderate’ Republican.
“Rafferty then was swamped in the general election by the liberal Democrat Alan Cranston”
“Swamped” by 5 points. LOL.
Kutchel’s suckipedia article says he failed to support poor Trick Nixon in his gubernatorial bid. And the he backed Senator Knowland over liberal Governor Knight in the ‘58 primary.
That has to be a mistake, since he wouldn't have had to make the choice. Knight and Knowland made a gentlemen's agreement to swap offices, which had dreadful repercussions with our losing both and allowing Pat Brown to win the Governorship and preside over redistricting. In hindsight, both should've stayed put and Knight would've been able to draw the lines for '62 and kept many Democrats from beginning long Congressional careers (at least staved them off for another decade). The GOP was underrepresented for decades to come from '62 onward.
That’s the pedia for for you. I knew I didn’t remember ever reading about a big ‘58 gubernatorial primary in Cali.
Also Dick Turban’s thrashing by 25 points of Pat Quinn in the 1996 Senatorial primary was described as “Durbin won the tight(<...!!!) Senate primary”.
Hmm the way they tell it
“In 1957, Knowland announced that he would challenge Knight in the 1958 Republican primary for governor. Knight, known as a moderate, and sympathetic to organized labor, faced a serious threat because the Republican Party was growing more conservative. He was induced by Knowland, Nixon, President Dwight Eisenhower, and others to run for Knowland’s Senate seat instead of running for governor again. “
I’m presuming Knowland harbored Presidential ambitions and realized the best way to the White House would be through the CA Governorship (although he more than likely would’ve known it would be 1968 before he could try to run). He probably saw the writing on the wall for the ‘58 elections and didn’t want to get the blame when the GOP suffered its worst losses in the Senate ever (and would’ve ultimately probably forced him from leadership to a backbencher position, so better the CA Governorship than backbencher Senator when there’s only 30-some members).
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