Agnew's Elastic List

Having written the charter for Radical-Liberal Club, Spiro Agnew is now going about the necessary business of drawing up bylaws and awarding membership cards. Not just anyone can get in, the Vice President has indicated. He may not have completed the screening process of all 57 Senate Democrats, but Agnew let the word drop in Palm Springs that only seven or eight of them really qualify "on a steady basis . . . day after day."

Associate memberships and some al-most-memberships are also available. "Ten to 15 Senators can qualify for the designation from time to time," he announced. He did not say so, but the possibility exists that, depending on which point in time is involved, the anointed ten or 15 may be different Senators. In a full week of contentious campaigning, Agnew named only one full-fledged Radic-Lib, Senator Phil Hart of Michigan. But he placed Senator Joseph Montoya of New Mexico on the waiting list. Montoya, Agnew said, is "not necessarily a Radical-Liberal," but he certainly is a big spender.

Other Candidates. Spending alone will not win Montoya full membership; it depends on what the spending is for. Here are some of the characteristics Agnew ascribed to Radical-Liberals in his speech at a Republican dinner in Albuquerque: they are "neo-isolationists in foreign policy . . . obstructionists in Congress at a time when America's need is for progressives who will cooperate with our President . . . social permissivists." Radic-Libs resist anticrime bills, undercut the President abroad, excuse violence while they denounce the police, support fast withdrawal from Asia, pooh-pooh pornography and keep religion out of the schools.

It is a list so broad that some Senate Republicans would qualify for public enrollment by name if Agnew were so inclined. But there is a substantial number of Democrats he may yet identify: Indiana's Birch Bayh and Iowa's Harold Hughes (their alliterative potential may make them doubly attractive to the Vice President), George McGovern of South Dakota, Albert Gore of Tennessee, Edmund Muskie of Maine, Joseph Tydings of Maryland, Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts.

His speeches continue to describe some of the real radicals--bombers of campus buildings, assassins of police. Then he almost invariably establishes a link between Weathermen or their ilk and liberal Democrats. In Albuquerque, he said: "Make no mistake. This radicalism that infects our Congress and poisons our country is at best a bizarre mutation of Democratic liberalism."

In Grand Rapids, his Radical-Liberals were "this little band of men guided by a policy of calculated weakness. They vote to weaken our defenses." Thus he attributes to those who vote for less than the Administration's military requests a deliberate decision to undercut preparedness. In the next sentence is Agnew's disclaimer: "These are not evil men. They are not disloyal men, or unpatriotic men."

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