Hardly anybody noticed, but there was another presidential nominating convention last week. Arriving at Chicago’s Conrad Hilton Hotel, about700 American conservatives, many from the South and West, gathered to choose a ticket to take on Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter in November.
The conservatives convened under the banner of the American Independent Party, a coalition of right-wing forces that claims roughly 1 million followers and has put forward national candidates since 1968. In that year Alabama’s George Wallace led the A.I.P. to its greatest electoral success, garnering an impressive 9.9 million votes—nearly 14% of the total cast. But Wallace dropped out of the 1972 race after his near-fatal wounding in Laurel, Md., and was not involved with the organization this year. Ronald Reagan, a leading horseman of the right, was reluctant to leave the Republican Party after his convention defeat to ride in the A.I.P. presidential saddle.
Nonetheless, followers of the two men made up the bulk of last week’s convention. The groups did not see eye to eye on every issue. Reagan backers favored a more aggressive anti-Communist foreign policy, advocating a strong American reaction against incidents like the killing of two U.S. soldiers by North Koreans. Wallace “populists” tended to isolationism. According to A.I.P. National Chairman William K. Shearer, “There wouldn’t be anybody there to get killed in the first place.”
Four Boxes. Still, the two movements found more than enough to agree upon. One keynote speaker suggested that America’s freedoms rest on four “boxes”: the soapbox, the jury box, the ballot box and, most important, the cartridge box. The platform opposed drugs, gun control, busing, welfare, ERA, Washington, the United Nations and Communism, and endorsed police enforcement, America First and the family.
Agreement broke down over the choice of a presidential slate. One faction was led by another former Governor of Georgia, fast-talking, flamboyant Lester Maddox, 60, who charged that George Wallace had “joined the pointy-headed bureaucrats.” John R. Rarick, 52, a former Louisiana Congressman who is anti-black and antiSemitic, headed up another. An articulate former New York judge, Robert Morris, 61, now president of the University of Piano in Texas, was the choice of the intellectuals, including William Rusher, publisher of National Review. Richard Viguerie, 42, a direct-mail specialist and publisher of Conservative Digest, was picked as Morris’ running mate.
Maddox won on the first ballot—a victory that bitterly disappointed the intellectual faction. It also stirred talk among them to try to form yet another party, one divorced from Maddox and his segregationist image.
The A.I.P. trumpet will thus be an uncertain one this fall—and probably in 1980 as well. The party drew only 1.4% of the vote in 1972 with former California Republican Congressman John Schmitz, a John Bircher, as its presidential candidate. It hopes to be on at least 30 state ballots this year. With its rigid platform and small following, however, it is hard to imagine the A.I.P. growing very fast, or very large.