George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

against the right-wing opposition. In so doing, the Ripon Society was also intervening in
favor of Bush. The Ripon people pointed to the guerilla warfare against Mayor as
"another demonstration of the persistent strength of the far right within the Texas GOP."
Shortly after this scaramouche, the dissident faction of the Harris County GOP controlled
87 of 189 precinct chairs.
But at the same time Bush took care to police his left flank, distancing himself from the
beginnings of the movement against the war in Vietnam which had been visible by the
middle of 1965. A remarkable document of this manuever is the text of the debate
between Bush and Ronnie Dugger, the writer and editor of the Texas Observer. The
debate was held July 1, 1965 before the Junior Bar of Texas convention in Fort Worth.
Dugger had endorsed Bush--in a way Dugger said was "not without whimsical intent" in
the GOP senate primary the year before. Dugger was no radical; at this point was not
really against the Vietnam war, and he actually endorsed the policy of LBJ, saying that
the President had "no easy way out of Viet Nam, but he is seeking and seeking hard for
an honorable way out." [fn 4] Nevertheless, Dugger found that LBJ had made a series of
mistakes in the implementation of his policy. Dugger also embraced the provisos
advanced by Senator Fulbright to the effect that "seeking a complete military victory
would cost more than the requirements of our interest and honor." So Dugger argued
against any further escalation, and argued that anti-war demonstrations and civil
disobedience could be beneficial.
Bush's first real cause for alarm was seeing "the civil rights movement being made over
into a massive vehicle with which to attack the President's foreign policy in Vietnam." He
started by attacking Conrad Lynn, a "Negro lawyer" who had told students at "my old
university- Yale University" - that "The United States white supremacists' army has been
sent to suppress the non-white people of the world." According to Bush "The Yale Daily
News reported that the audience applauded when [Lynn] annunced that several Negroes
had gone to Asia to enlist in the North Viet Nam army to fight against the United States."
Then Bush turned to his real target, Martin Luther King. King, he said, who is "identified
with the freedom of the Negro cause, says in Boston the other day that he doesn't want to
sit at a segregated lunch counter where you have strontium 90 in the milk, overlooking
the fact that it's the communists who are testing in the atmosphere today, the Red
Chinese. It's not the United States." Then there was Bayard Rustin, "a leading individual
in the Negro struggle for freedom, [who] calls for withdrawal from Viet Nam." This is all
hypocritical in Bush's view, since "they talk about civil rights in this country, but they are
willing to sacrifice the individual rights in the communist countries."
Bush was equally riled up over anti-war demonstrations, since they were peopled by what
he called "extremists:" "I am sure you know what an extremist is. That's a guy who takes
a good idea and carries it to simply preposterous ends. And that's what's happened. Of
course, the re-emergence of the political beatnik is causing me personally a good deal of
pleasure. Many conservatives winced during 1964 as we were labelled extremists of the
right. And certainly we were embarrassed by the booing of Nelson Rockefeller at the
convention, and some of the comments that referred to the smell of fascism in the air at
the Republican convention, and things like this, and we winced."