Republican Club: A Quiet 20-Year-Old

William A. Rusher, the Buckley conservative who founded the Harvard Young Republican Club in 1947, values decorum. Rusher, now publisher of the National Review returns to Harvard every year to speak to today's Republican Club. Last year he said he was pleased to see all the males who had come to hear him without beards and with ties.

The Executive Committee of the Harvard Republican Club, which runs and almost is the club, is not quite so prissy and conservative as Rusher might wish. Room 167 of Memorial Hall basement, where the committee meets, has been entered on occasion by a bearded Republican. Problems like alcoholism and punishment for parietal breaking are not unknown in recent Executive Committee history.

Yet the Harvard Republicans themselves would generally concede, albeit a bit unwillingly, that they are less colorful than their more radical counterparts.

The Executive Committee attracts a particular type of person. Leslie A. Levis '67, one of the club's first Radcliffe members (the club merged with the Radcliffe Republican Club in the spring of 1966) said last year, "Executive Committee members all look like Midwesterners." A Jewish committee member from New York seems more like the Wyoming rancher Republican than other New Yorkers. And the president of the club, Jay B. Stephens '68, is an earnest Iowan.

These are not the sort of people who make headlines, at least not as undergraduates, and to most Harvard undergraduates the Republican Club seems lifeless because of the lack of excitement it generates. But the club is not unexciting to those who make it part of their Harvard career.

Stephens says, "Despite the appearance of listlessness from the outside, the intellectual vitality of the club has never been at a higher point." Executive Committee meetings are often the scene for lively debates on practical political problems. Stephens feels that the examination of political problems justifies the existence of a college Republican club.

But what Stephens calls "an opportunity for a student to examine his thoughts about political problems" is not used by most of the over 300 members of the Republican club. Dissension alone brings interest to a large club of this type. And dissension alone can cure the member apathy that plagues any college political organization, whether it be Democratic, Republican or the Radcliffe Government Organization. And now, there just doesn't seem to be anything left for the YR's to fight about.

A mock convention held last spring was heated enough to cause a walk-out of conservatives when Senator Charles Percy was nominated. But the conservatives who walked out were all from MIT and Holy Cross.

When Paul Wagler '69, then Operations Director of the club, ran last year for the chairmanship of Harvard Students for a Democratic Society and seriously said he felt he could serve both groups effectively, talk of censuring him faded away quickly. In the '50's such behavior would have been considered scandalous for a Republican.

"Appeasement"

The Executive Committee has become, in a short time, quite liberal. In 1960 HYRC members marched on Mount Auburn Street to protest what was termed Adlai Stevenson's "appeasement" in a speech he had delivered on the then-recent summit failure. It wouldn't happen today. HYRC ers are still more conservative politically than their Democratic counterparts but, in many cases, not much more. And there is nothing too exciting, nothing to generate member interest, in being fairly liberal at Harvard today.

But the Republican Club, in a livelier past, had something more to differentiate itself from the present club than a sharper conservative-liberal ideological split. It had a "machine."

For years the members of the Executive Committee have referred to a small group, consisting of the president and a few associates, as the "Machine." When March--and the annual club elections--neared the Machine's candidate for the coming year, who may have been picked when a freshman as a potential president, was generally opposed by another faction. The Machine almost invariably won, and then was violently opposed for the next year by the losers. The friction helped to animate the club.

Charles Scott '67, vice-president of the club last year and now a first year student at the Business School, thinks that the Machine is defunct today. He said, "It never recovered from Eric Van Salzen."

Von Salzen came to the presidency of the club in 1964, a bad year for Republicans. Goldwater is only partially to blame for the decline in the HYRC which began that year. The Republican Party may have recovered from the debacle of '64, but the club has not.

Von Salzen beat the Machine candidate in the '64 club election. The Machine had been effective from the spring of 1962 to the spring of 1964, and the club's membership had climbed to almost 400 from approximately 150 five years before. The Young Democrats, at Democratic Harvard, had a membership of 100 less. A trip to Washington in 1963 received national publicity and brought more speakers to the club than ever before. According to Scott, "The Machine set the line, and things got done."

And then the Machine was beaten.

In 1965, though, David McNichol won the presidency of the club back for the Machine. He did it, however, with the help of unknowns whom Scott said had been "not entirely welcome." James W. Vaupel '67, who succeeded McNichol, was one of these. Vaupel's own successor, Stephens, labelled a Machine man by the opposing ticket at last year's election, began his Harvard Republican career as an anti-Machine candidate. Traditionally, YR's stayed with the same faction all the way. The chain had been broken.

Low Stakes

This may seem quite petty for such low stakes as the presidency of a college political club. But the YR elections have always been its biggest event.

An aspirant for the office may inwardly feel that the stakes are not low, that the YR presidency is a step toward the big-time. YR execs often harbor a desire to run for office eventually, or to have an influence with those who do. That many past presidents of the club today staff large law firms of unknown names indicates the probable lack of base for this hope.

Stephens attributes the importance of the presidency of the club--and the existence of the Machine built around it--to more than political opportunism. He explains, "The image people have of the club is identified with its president. His ideological bent is assumed to be club policy."

If ideology is as important as Stephens says, it follows that the greater the conservative-liberal spirit among club activists, the more likely there is to be friction--and excitement--in the club.

The late '50's were years when conservatives bitterly fought liberals. The Republican club had been uneventful during the first ten years of its existence; most Harvard Republicans were faithful to the tradition of their conservative founder. The biggest problem then, as now, was getting speakers. Theodore Roosevelt McKeldin, billed as "one of the great orators of past centuries," was in Israel at the time of his planned speech at the 1952 Mock Convention. A Baptist minister eventually delivered the keynote, substituting for McKeldin's replacement. (The speakers program has always been plagued by bad luck--one of this year's speakers planned speakers fail-to come here because of a cracked rib.)

The club shook off the proper influence of its founder in 1957. The CRIMSON's lead story of Monday, February 25 was headlined Student Council to Investigate Charges of Votebuying in HRYC. That night the Student Council suspended the charter of the club to examine its election campaign.

The election fight had broken out the day before when the CRIMSON obtained a statement from a freshman who charged that he had been offered a free membership card to vote for the presidential candidate backed by the outgoing president. Other students then testified that they had been offered free memberships and beer for their votes, and the charter was suspended.

The HYRC set up a Special Committee of Law School Republicans to investigate the elections and to report to the Student Council. In the meantime, Dean Watson denied rumors that outside pressure had been brought to bear on him not to take any formal action against the club. Rumors had been circulating throughout the University that interested undergraduates had sent letters to wealthy Republicans asking that they exert economic pressure on the University's then current fund drive.

The suspension of the charter was withdrawn two weeks after the controversy began. The report of the Special Committee called the charges of vote-fixing invalid. The freshman who began it all was attacked as a publicity hound.

The elections that followed, while less publicized, involved, nevertheless, charges of slander and ballot stuffing by both the Machine and its opponents. In withdrawing from the election of 1959, one candidate said. "I find it impossible to continue in a race which annually results in personal slander and character assassination."

Petty Grievances

Von Salzen ended this, and there has been no evidence of character assassination within the Executive Committee of the Harvard Young Republican Club this year. Members do snipe at each other, but the petty grievances would hardly interest outsiders. The two presidential aspirants this fall have had friendly talks about the upcoming election; it is possible that one may decide not to run. The ideological differences between the two have not inspired the fight of the past.

The last two club elections have not been dull. The 1966 ticket was unopposed, but a "gorilla" ran against Scott for vice-president. (The gorilla was disqualified because only homo sapiens are eligible for club membership.) Last year the "group" who had backed the gorilla reappeared; one of them called the club a farce, singing "We've Got Trouble Right Here in YR's" to the tune from The Music Man.

There will be no gorillas running for a Republican Club office this coming March. The "group" has graduated. New constitutional rules will make it difficult for a buffoon candidate to run.

No in-fighting and no gorillas.

Harvard Republicans are acting, true to the familiar stereotype and in accord with the desires of the publisher of the National Review, like gentlemen.