"What's Wrong with Us?"

Almost every Republican has some sort of explanation for the party's 1964 disaster and some sort of remedy for the future. Among the more provocative commentators is former G.O.P. National Chairman Leonard Hall of New York, who aired his ideas last week in an article for the Long Island newspaper Newsday. Excerpts:

We have permitted our party to become too exclusive. We have been trying to elect national candidates with the descendants of the people who came over on the Mayflower, and that boat just wasn't big enough. The answers can be found in an analysis of dramatic Republican victories last November, despite the nationwide Democratic tide. In Massachusetts, the home of the Cabots and the Lodges, John Volpe, the son of Italian immigrants, was elected Governor, and Ed Brooke, a descendant of Negro slaves, was overwhelmingly re-elected attorney general; in California, George Murphy, an Irish-American Catholic, overcame seemingly impossible odds to be elected Senator, and in Hawaii, Hiram Fong, a descendant of contract laborers brought from China, won re-election to the Senate by a huge majority, while Democrats were sweeping practically all other offices in his state.

Unfortunately, there are far too few Volpes and Brookes and Murphys and Fongs in the Republican ranks, and our party gives the appearance of being an organization of white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. America is a nation of racial, religious and ethnic minorities. Overall, even the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants are a minority. I admit, regretfully, that when you attend any meeting of Republicans on the national scale, the faces you see and the names you hear are rarely Negro, Italian-American, Polish-American, Irish-American, or Jewish, or any of the other groups that combine to make up our country. Look at what happened in 1960 and 1964: in both of those presidential elections the Republicans lost 75% of the Catholic vote. We lost 80% of the Jewish vote, and we lost from 75% to 96% of the Negro vote. These figures are crucial to the future of the Republican Party.

Long & Short. It is true that when we start a national political campaign we will form a Jewish committee and an Italian-American committee and a Polish-American committee, and so on. Then, when we get into office, what do we do?

A comparison of the Cabinets under Eisenhower, and under Kennedy and Johnson, will show what I mean. When I went to Washington as Republican National Chairman in 1953, I found that President Eisenhower had told all Cabinet officers that they could bring in their own men as deputies, staff assistants and advisers. When I looked over the list of appointments, I discovered that a great percentage of the jobs in the executive end of government had gone to Michigan and New York. Why? Well, first, that's where big business is. And second, the Cabinet, while long on brains, was somewhat short on politics. As a result, the Eisenhower Administration turned out, in the eyes of the public, to be almost exclusively Anglo-Saxon and Protestant, even though Eisenhower himself remained the idol of all elements in the country.

Then we come to the Kennedy-Johnson era, and what do we see there? We see a Goldberg. We see a Ribicoff. We then see a Celebrezze; we see a Gronouski. And now we see Connor. And remember: in politics it's often what you look like, as much as if not more than what you really do, that brings you support.

Look Around. The Democrats recognize that America is made up of minorities and see that they are represented at the highest level of government. In the Republican Party the minorities are not so recognized. The other day I attended a meeting of Republican congressional leaders and others who want to help in the Republican congressional campaign of 1966. Someone said, "What's wrong with us?" "Look around the table," I said. Here we were, a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant group. There was not a Jewish man there. There was not a Polish-American. There was not an Italian-American. There was not a Negro. The person next to me said, "Len, I think there's one Catholic."

What should Republicans do now? There is no one simple answer, no quick and easy remedy. But we must begin by building a broader base for this party. We must get away from the idea that this is an exclusive club. I do not mean that we should pander to the minority groups as some liberal Democrats do. It's our job to show members of minority groups that our policies will preserve their heritage and provide them true opportunity. Their participation in developing Republican policy is the best way of demonstrating our concern for the true and lasting interests of all Americans.

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