Books in Brief: The Condition of Republicanism

The Condition of Republicanism, by Nick Thimmesch (Norton, $5.95). This study of the Republican Party has the impartial virtues of its undiscriminating defects. Mr. Thimmesch finds something good to say about practically everybody— even Barry Goldwater. At one point he actually takes Nelson Rockefeller to task and at another says that Goldwater was smeared in ‘64. For these assertions, Mr. Thimmesch deserves very high marks indeed. Yet his own liberal predispositions keep leading him into the paths of political error. The people he believes to be most representative of the GOP are liberals of the Lindsay-Hatfield-Percy-Evans breed— who found themselves in a forlorn minority at Miami Beach. As a result, Thimmesch spends 80 per cent of his time talking about 20 per cent of the party and winds up making analytical mistakes that could easily be avoided. He says, for example, that most Southern Republican congressmen elected in ‘66 were “moderates” (their voting records are overwhelmingly conservative) and asserts that liberal Republican Thomas Kuchel’s political position is “popular with Californians” (Kuchel was beaten in the June primary by conservative Max Rafferty). The author has tried hard to see the Republican Party whole, but the liberal mind-set seems to be more powerful than the best of journalistic intentions.