The year the GOP went South.

Republicans opened their national convention in the San Francisco Cow Palace on Monday, July 13. All three television networks covered the four-day national pageant more or less continuously, anticipating an abrupt regional and ideological shift of power toward Sen. Barry Goldwater's Western conservatives from the long-dominant Eastern business interests. There was little suspense beyond a slight possibility that Dwight Eisenhower, the only Republican president of the past 30 years, might throw his transcendent influence publicly against Goldwater. Eisenhower was known to resent Goldwater for calling his administration a "dime store New Deal," and privately he had threatened to renounce the Goldwater forces for reckless exploitation on civil rights, saying that if Republicans "begin to count on the `white backlash,' we will have a big civil war." Rumors of a decisive Eisenhower statement quickened when his brother Milton delivered a passionate nominating address on behalf of William Scranton, the surviving alternative to Goldwater, but Eisenhower remained neutral to the end. He could not bring himself to split his party in support of Scranton, a sure loser to Goldwater, and he had never been comfortable speaking about racial harmony, anyway.

In his speech to the convention on Tuesday night, Eisenhower himself stirred the passions for which he blamed Goldwater. "Let us not be guilty of maudlin sympathy for the criminal ... roaming the streets with switchblade knife," he declared. The Cow Palace came alive with roars of approval. ("The phrase `switchblade knife' means `Negro' to the average white American," explained a dismayed Roy Wilkins in a newspaper column entitled "Ike Struck Lowest Blow." Wilkins could only hope that a speech writer had inserted the sentence without Eisenhower's knowledge) Eisenhower evoked still greater emotion when he attacked the press, urging his audience to "particularly scorn the divisive efforts of those outside our family, including sensation-seeking columnists and commentators, because ... these are people who couldn't care less about the good of our party." This time the delegates responded with standing cheers, many shaking angry fists at the reporters' booths around the Cow Palace.

Campaign historian Theodore White described the release of pent-up anger as a turning point for the convention, if not for the role and reputation of the American press. Before then, White contrasted the "well-dressed and well-mannered Goldwater delegates" favorably with "civil rightsers" marching and picketing outside the Cow Palace, but the Eisenhower speech opened the convention itself to confrontation. Goldwater delegates and the spectator galleries showered New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller with catcalls and boos when he tried to speak against extremism. Hostilities erupted on the convention floor. Afterward, neither the triumphant Goldwater conservatives nor the defeated Rockefeller-Scranton liberals smoothed their raging antagonism in the interest of party unity. "Hell, I don't want to talk to that son-of-a-bitch," Goldwater growled when Rockefeller called him to concede the nomination. Life magazine bemoaned the "ugly tone" of the entire convention. The New York Times called it a "disaster" for both the United States and the Republicans, saying the Goldwater nomination could "reduce a once great party to the status of an ugly, angry, frustrated faction."

On the morning after his acceptance speech, Senator Goldwater sought an audience with General Eisenhower, who was straying again toward rebellion over Goldwater's chief applause line, "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." Echoing a widespread public outcry, Eisenhower demanded to know how Goldwater could see "extremism" as good politics when it smacked of kooks. More personally, he told Goldwater that the slogan reminded him of right-wing zealots who had called Eisenhower himself "a conscious agent of the communists" in the White House, which was "utter tommyrot." Goldwater stammered through several unsuccessful replies before trying a D-Day analogy. What he meant was that patriotism required sacrifice, said Goldwater, and that General Eisenhower had been the ultimate "extremist" for liberty when he sent the Allied troops across the English Channel against Hitler. This interpretation transformed Eisenhower's mood. "By golly, that makes real sense," he said with a smile of relief that nearly matched Goldwater's. Still, this close call within the Republican bosom shook the new presidential candidate, who resolved never to repeat his signature phrase during the campaign.

Newsweek pronounced the San Francisco convention "stunningly total -- and unconditional ... an authentic party revolution, born of deep-seated frustration with the existing order, executed by a new breed of pros with a ruthless skill." Other mainstream outlets speculated about Eisenhower, the rejection of Wall Street Republicans, or Goldwater's poor prospects against Lyndon Johnson, but their excitements were mild beside the acute distress of Negro publications. "GOP Convention Spurns Negroes," cried the Cleveland Call and Post. "Negro Delegates to GOP Convention Suffer Week of Humiliation," headlined the Associated Negro Press newswire. "The Great Purge of Negroes," announced Jet. "GOP Negroes Washed Away by the Goldwater Ocean," said the Chicago Defender. Their focus was less on the Goldwater nomination itself than on the institutional rejection of cherished Republican fixtures such as George W. Lee of Memphis, delegate to every GOP convention since 1940, who had "seconded the nomination of Robert A. Taft" in 1952. The San Francisco convention, sweeping aside Lee's credentials claim that he and 200 "regular" Negro Republicans had been railroaded out of the Shelby County caucus, seated "lily-white" delegations in Tennessee and every other Southern state "for the first time since Reconstruction Days," reported the Pittsburgh Courier, noting that the caucus of Southern Republicans, "to add insult to injury," named its hotel headquarters Fort Sumter. Southern Republicans re-formed as a homogeneous group. Of the region's 375 convention delegates, all were white and at least 366 supported Goldwater.

Minority observers mourned the loss of Republican stalwarts far beyond the sinecures and patronage posts of the South. In "Cal. GOP/White Man's Party," the California Eagle of Los Angeles protested a seldom-mentioned fact about Goldwater's victory over Rockefeller in the decisive June 2 primary: It gained convention seats and control of party machinery for a slate of 86 California delegates that "by deliberate choice" was exclusively white. Nationwide, by slating no Negro candidates and defeating most opposing tickets, Goldwater strategists whittled the number of Negro delegates to a minuscule 14 of 1,308, roughly one per hundred, in what newspapers called the fewest "ever to be certified to a Republican convention."

At the Cow Palace, the rolling invective that startled television viewers fell personally upon this tiny remnant. The Cleveland Call and Post reported that George Fleming of New Jersey ran from the hall in tears, saying Negro delegates "had been shoved, pushed, spat on, and cursed with a liberal sprinkling of racial epithets." George Young, labor secretary of Pennsylvania, complained that Goldwater delegates harassed him to the point of setting his suit jacket on fire with a cigarette. Baseball legend Jackie Robinson summarized his "unbelievable hours" as an observer on the convention floor: "I now believe I know how it felt to be a Jew in Hitler's Germany."

The Chicago Defender raised the Nazi analogy to a blaring headline: "GOP Convention, 1964 Recalls Germany, 1933." Editor John H. Sengstacke eulogized the lost tradition reaching back to the armies of Grant and Sherman: "The Grand Old Party, which fought against slavery, which kept the flame of hope burning on the altar of freedom ... which sustained the faith of Negro people ... is gasping its last breath in the Cow Palace." In the South, where Negro Republicans could imagine no substitute haven among Democrats, editors and owners of the few Negro newspapers writhed under the assault to their Republican identity. Atlanta Daily World owner C. A. Scott first denied the Cow Palace revolution ("Scranton on the Move"), then mitigated its effect ("stands to reason ... that the party as a whole will not be carried too far from traditional Republican principles"), then pretended it was good ("... may have a stimulating effect on the development of a real two-party system in the South"), and finally called upon the scalded, soul-torn Old Guard to "hold the fort" no matter what. He praised the Negro delegates for deciding not to walk out of the Cow Palace in abject resignation. They had endured only a "graphic demonstration" of what Democrats -- "the party of Bilbo, Eastland, Thurmond, Barnett, Wallace" -- inflicted regularly through the past half century, wrote Scott, concluding solemnly that it was "useless for a Negro today to think he solves the race issue in politics by jumping from one major party to the other."

White voters could jump, too, in numbers of far greater impact. "I think we just gave the South to the Republicans," President Johnson told his staff on the way to his Texas ranch after signing the civil rights bill. Aides debated his words in strictest confidence. One alarmist feared that Johnson could lose the election solely on the race issue. Others thought Johnson was hoping he could win even if he lost the entire South. There was precedent for white Southern Democrats voting Republican on presidential ballots -- Eisenhower and Nixon had cracked through to win a few Southern states -- but it was daunting for any Democrat to contemplate the terrible math of running against rather than with the full weight of the traditional "solid South."

Only hindsight suggested that Johnson had glimpsed a more dramatic, permanent change. Bill Moyers recalled Johnson saying that he had delivered the South to Republicans "for your lifetime and mine," which would turn the whole structure of politics on a fulcrum of color. In their direst visions, after the Goldwater convention followed hard upon the civil rights bill, neither established experts nor shell-shocked Negro Republicans anticipated a wholesale switch of party identification down to the roots of congressional and local offices. Historic affiliations were too well fixed, with Republicans more united behind Negro rights than Democrats. In Congress, fully 80 percent of House Republicans and 82 percent of GOP senators had just voted for the civil rights bill, with Democrats lagging behind because of their entrenched segregationist wing. In precincts and state conventions, Republicans everywhere were organized in part around the glorious memory of Emancipation, which was precisely what had reduced them to near extinction among Southerners. For generations, none but the occasional eccentric Republican had bothered to contest elections for Southern state houses, legislatures, or courthouse jobs. Of 41 U.S. representatives from the core Deep South states of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and South Carolina, Republicans in 1964 numbered zero.

The century's first handful of promising Deep South Republican candidates arrived at the San Francisco convention hopeful of novel success in the fall elections. One of them, James D. Martin of Alabama, met alone with Senator Goldwater on the roof of the Mark Hopkins Hotel to propose George Wallace's hastily conceived terms for a campaign alliance. Wallace wanted a public reward -- veto power over Supreme Court nominees, or, shockingly, a place on the Republican ticket as Goldwater's running mate -- in exchange for his agreement not to run as an independent presidential candidate, which likely would doom Goldwater in Southern states. Goldwater declined, knowing he had more to lose than to gain, saying Wallace after all was still a Democrat. Martin returned to circulate on the Cow Palace floor with his message that Republicans should rise above crude racial appeals to larger issues such as federal heavy-handedness, which he called "Bobby Kennedy tearing around like a predator at the constitution of Mississippi and the registration laws of Alabama." Wallace himself formally withdrew from the presidential race three days after the Republican convention, leaving behind a tacit endorsement of Goldwater and a claim that he had changed the language of political debate. "Today we hear more states' rights talk than we have heard in the last quarter century ...," he told "Face the Nation" interviewers on July 19. "... The American people are sick and tired of columnists and TV dudes who ... try to slant and distort and malign and brainwash this country."

Only four years earlier, when advocates of civil rights had received a congenial welcome at the Republican convention in Chicago, Negro delegates had walked out of the Democratic convention in protest of Kennedy concessions to Southern segregationists. Now Negro leaders of both parties recoiled from the concerted hostility of the Cow Palace Republicans, which they could only hope was an aberrational coup traceable to Goldwater, disconnected from both old tradition and new racial progress. Martin Luther King and others denounced the Republican ticket on its first official day and nearly every day thereafter. With a peculiar mix of vehemence and care, King took pains to stop short of partisan endorsement, saying he was more against Goldwater than for Johnson, hoping that a sound enough defeat for Goldwater might restrain both parties from political white flight.

Who's Who

Two of the more curious attackers of Bill Clinton's alleged adultery and lying were George Will and Joe Klein. Klein, you will recall, repeatedly lied about his authorship of Primary Colors and indignantly attacked those who said he lied. A few years ago, Will's first wife evicted him, throwing his belongings on the street in front of their home, after she learned that he was involved with another woman.

Is Bill Gates worried about the antitrust suit that the Department of Justice's Joel I. Klein has brought against Microsoft? It seems he just might be. To back up his 70 in-house lawyers, he has retained not just one but two of the nation's most prestigious firms, Sullivan and Cromwell of New York and Covington and Burling of Washington.

To back up the attorneys, Microsoft has a Washington lobbying team headed by Jack Krumholtz and has enlisted the service of two highly influential former congressmen, Republican Vin Weber and Democrat Tom Downey.

Thoughts of hypocrisy naturally lead to George Stephanopolous. Mickey Kaus recently noted in Slate that in the 1992 campaign documentary, "The War Room" Stephanopolous "bullied and cajoled" a phone caller who proposed to release a fist of Clinton paramours: "You would be laughed at ... I guarantee that if you do this you will never work in Democratic politics again ... nobody will believe and people will think you're scum."

Now that Stephanopolous has become a Clinton tsk-tsker on "ABC News," Kaus observes, "it's as if Roy Cohn went on television in the mid-1950s to soberly rue the damage wreaked by Sen. Joe McCarthy without any apology for his own role."

A straw poll was taken at the 25th annual Conservative Political Action Conference held recently in Arlington, Va. The result: Steve Forbes came out ahead with 23 percent, trailed by George W. Bush with 10. The significance of the poll, insiders tell us, is that these are the red-meat conservatives who dominate GOP caucuses and primaries. David Keene, the CPAC chairman, told Ralph Hallow of The Washington Times that the results, which more than doubled the 11 percent Forbes got at last year's conference, showed that Forbes "has worked the hardest and spent the most to build a following among economic and social conservatives."

When Bill Clinton's friendship with Vernon Jordan first became news a few years ago, this column noted that they certainly had one interest in common. A recent article in Newsweek was more explicit: "Asked at a party earlier this year what it was he and Clinton talk about on the golf course, Jordan slyly replied: `We talk pu -- y.'" Newsweek is no doubt trying to be delicate, but those who are mystified should understand that two letters are missing, not one.

Curiously enough, before Joel Klein filed his landmark case against Microsoft, he had been suspected of being too soft on big business. At Klein's confirmation hearing, Sen. Ernest Hollings warned "we've got an antitrust fellow here who rolls over and plays dead."

We've noted that practically all the GOP presidential hopefuls are trying to hire Ralph Reed, the former head of the Christian Coalition. Now comes Gloria Borger with a report on just how far some of the fellows are willing to go to get Reed: "Both Quayle and Forbes have signed on to stump for some of Reed's congressional clients. Think about it: campaigning to curry favor with a political consultant."

Does "Who's Who" get it first? You bet it does! From Jamie Rubin's closeness to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright -- wonder if it will be a tad diminished by his attention to bride-to-be Christiane Amanpour? -- which we reported in September, to the crucial part of the Gennifer Flowers tape where Bill Clinton advised, "I just think that if everybody's on record denying it you've got no problem ... [I]f everybody kind of hangs tough, they're not going to do anything and if they ever ask if you've talked to me about it you can say no." That item appeared in the March 1992 "Who's Who."

Speaking of Steve Forbes, a friend swears he heard him say this in a recent speech: "But also too we're entering a new economic era as well."

If you wonder why Ralph Reed decided to go into campaign consulting, Dick Morris made $1.5 million from the 1996 Clinton campaign, even though he left in August after his toe-job at the Hotel Jefferson had been revealed. Robert Squier's firm, Squier Knapp Ochs, which served throughout the campaign, took in $2.5 million, according to The Washington Post's John F. Harris.

You've probably learned by now that Lucianne Goldberg, the literary agent who suggested that Linda Tripp tape Monica Lewinsky's acocunt of her extracurricular activities in the Oval Office, was paid $1,000 a week by Richard Nixon's forces to spy on George McGovern during the 1972 campaign. "I remember her as a very flashy blonde who wore short skirts, tight tops, and made goo-goo eyes at all the guys," Bess Abell, who was Lady Bird Johnson's top aide, told Knight Ridder's Frank Greve and Ron Hutcheson.

But did you know that not only did Goldberg urge Tripp to do the taping and introduce her to Newsweek's Michael Isikoff, she even suggested the messenger service, owned by Goldberg's older brother, that delivered Lewinsky's packages and then turned over the delivery records to Goldberg;

One of Al Kamen's sources caught Sen. Frank Lautenberg pressuring flight attendants to move him into first class. The episode reminded one of our colleagues of a time when Sen. David Pryor, riding in coach, spotted Sen. David Boren luxuriating in first class. Pryor wrote a note signed "an indignant constituent" and had a flight attendant carry it to his colleague. As Boren read it, he blanched. It said: "I'm shocked to realize that you've either used taxpayers' funds or used special influence to sit in first class while those of us who work to pay your salary ride in the rear." Pryor finally confessed to authorship when they disembarked.

All of which reminds us of a recent taxpayer-financed junket led by Sen. Trent Lott. The highlight of the trip, wrote Eric Schmitt of The New York Times, was "a two-night stay at Fantasy Island, a luxurious resort in Honduras known for its world-class scuba diving, deep-sea fishing, tennis, and white sandy beaches."