George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

to procure 100,000 signatures for Goldwater, with each signer also plunking down a
dollar to fill the GOP coffers. "An excellent way for those who support Goldwater-like
me- to make it known," opined Chairman George. Bush fostered a partisan --one might
say vindictive-- mood at the county GOP headquarters: the Houston Chronicle of June 6,
1963 reports that GOP activists were amusing themselves by tossing darts at a balloons
suspended in front of a photograph of President Johnson. Bush told the Chronicle: "I saw
the incident and it did not offend me. It was just a gag."
But Bush's pro-Goldwater efforts were not universally appreciated. In early July Craig
Peper, the current chairman of the party finance committee, stood up in a party gathering
and attacked the leaders of the Draft Goldwater movement, including Bush as "right wing
extremists." Bush had not been purging any Birchers, but he was not willing to permit
such attacks from his left. Bush accordingly purged Peper, demanding his resignation
after a pro-Goldwater meeting at which Bush had boasted that he was "100% for the draft
Goldwater move."
A few weeks after ousting Peper, Bush contributed one of his first public political
statements as an op ed in the Houston Chronicle of 28 July 1963. Concerning he recent
organizational problems, he whined that the county organization was "afflicted with some
dry-martini critics who talk and don't work." Then, in conformity with his family doctrine
and his own dominant obsession, Bush turned to the issue of race. As a conservative, he
had to lament that fact that "Negroes" "think that conservatism means segregation."
Nothing could be further from the truth. This was rather the result of slanderous
propaganda which Republican public relations men had not sufficiently refuted: "First,
they attempt to present us as racists. The Republican party of Harris County is not a racist
party. We have not presented our story to the Negroes in the county. Our failure to attract
the Negro voter has not been because of a racist philosophy; rather, it has been a product
of our not having had the organization to tackle all parts of the country." What then was
the GOP line on the race question? "We believe in the basic premiss that the individual
Negro surrenders the very dignity and freedom he is struggling for when he accept money
for his vote or when he goes along with the block vote dictates of some Democratic boss
who couldn't care less about the quality of the candidates he is pushing." So the GOP
would try to separate the black voter from the Democrats. Bush conceded: "We have a
tough row to hoe here."
After these pronouncements on race, Bush then want on to the trade union front.
Yarborough's labor backing was exceedingly strong, and Bush lost no time in assailing
the state AFL-CIO and its Committee on Political Education (COPE) for gearing up to
help Yarborough in his race. For Bush this meant that the AFL-CIO was not supporting
the "two -party system." "A strong pitch is being made to dun the [union] membership to
help elect Yarborough"-- he charged -- "long before Yarborough's opponent is even
known."
Bush also spoke out during this period on foreign affairs, He demanded that President
Kennedy "muster the courage" to undertake a new attack on Cuba. [fn 13]