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Virginia Ninth District Republican Convention, Abington, VA, June 29, 1968
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This file contains material relating to Bill Wampler.
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The original documents are located in Box D25, folder "Virginia Ninth District Republican
Convention, Abington, VA, June 29, 1968" of the Ford Congressional Papers: Press
Secretary and Speech File at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.
Copyright Notice
The copyright law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of
photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. The Council donated to the United
States of America his copyrights in all of his unpublished writings in National Archives collections.
Works prepared by U.S. Government employees as part of their official duties are in the public
domain. The copyrights to materials written by other individuals or organizations are presumed to
remain with them. If you think any of the information displayed in the PDF is subject to a valid
copyright claim, please contact the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.
Q Office Copy
CONGRESSMAN
NEWS
GERALD R. FORD
HOUSE REPUBLICAN LEADER
RELEASE
An Address by Rep. Gerald R. Ford, R-Mich., House Republican Leader, at the Virginia
Ninth District Republican Convention at 1:30 P.M., Saturday, June 29, 1968, at
Abingdon, Virginia.
It is wonderful to be in Bill Wampler's district talking with all you fine
people.
It is always a pleasure for me to be in Bill Wampler's company because Bill
is one of the really solid members of the U.S. House of Representatives, a man who
is keenly attentive to the needs of his congressional district and an honest spokes-
man for the people there. I can assure all of the voters of the Ninth Virginia
District that Bill Wampler is doing a great job on the House Agriculture Committee
and that nobody excels him as a conscientious and hard-working legislator.
If anyone knows what's best for this congressional district, Bill Wampler
does. He is looking out for his people every minute of the day. And he handles
every dollar of the taxpayer's money just as though it were coming out of his own
pocket. I can personally testify to the fact that Bill Wampler is a great champion
of government economy, and the record of the votes he cast in the 90th Congress
will bear me out.
We need men like Bill Wampler in the Congress--men who will turn over a tax
dollar at least twice before they spend it and then try to make it go twice as far;
legislators who believe ours is a government of laws and not of men and who will
never turn our country over to the forces of anarchy; men who love the tillers of
the soil and the miners who dig riches out of the depths of the earth, those who
work hard and are proud of working for a living; legislators who believe that the
states and local communities should be strong and vigorous units of government and
not appendages of the federal bureaucratic octopus.
Yes, we badly need men like Bill Wampler in the House of Representatives, and
so I ask you today to do everything possible to send Bill back to Washington next
January.
I am very much aware of the heavy Democratic registration in Virginia's
Ninth Congressional District. This does not worry me as much in 1968 as in previous
election years, and I'll tell you why.
It doesn't worry me because I think we will get the right answers and
Republican votes if we just let the voters know what has happened to this country
in the last seven years. Just ask the people of the Ninth District these questions:
(more)
Digitized from Box D25 of The Ford Congressional Papers: Press Secretary and Speech File at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library
-2-
Which political party is it which has spent this Nation into a financial
crisis without solving the people's problems?
Which party is it which has poured billions of dollars into the problems
of the cities only to have them erupt in riots snuffing out 123 lives and costing
nearly a billion dollars just in the last year and a half?
Which party is it which has pumped billions of dollars into a War on
Poverty--in which the opening gun was fired just before the 1964 election--only to
have the Poor march on Washington four years later and threaten to turn the Nation's
capital upside down?
Which party is it which has bogged this Nation down in a land war in Vietnam,
where nearly 30,000 Americans have lost their lives and some $70 billion of our
wealth has been dissipated?
Which party is it which is about to impose an income tax increase on the
American people to offset its extravagant federal spending?
The National Democratic Party not only has failed to solve America's
problems, it has created crushing new ones.
Ask the people of your district to look at what has happened to America in
the last seven years.
We have become involved in a no-win war which the contenders for the
Democratic Presidential nomination in 1968 would end by bringing the Communists
into a coalition government--while the Southvietnamese Government arrests a former
Presidential candidate for making such a proposal.
The cost of living has raced upward by nearly 20 per cent and while it used
to be said that a fool and his money are soon parted now this tragedy happens to
all of us under Democrat inflation.
The national crime rate has jumped 88 per cent while our population has
increased 10 per cent.
Europeans have lost confidence in the dollar and have nearly drained this
country of its gold supply.
Our paper money has become exactly that--because the Johnson-Humphrey-
McCarthy Democratic Party has removed the 25 per cent gold backing from our
currency.
For more than five months a fourth-rate Communist power has held a United
States intelligence ship and 82 crewmen captive after attacking the vessel with
impunity and killing one of the crew.
It was clearly a lack of preparedness by the Johnson-Humphrey Administration
(more)
-3-
to deal with an incident like the Pueblo affair that resulted in the capture of
the ship and the crew.
This is all part of the record of the Democratic Administrations and the
Democratic-controlled Congresses which have guided this country's fortunes and
misfortunes since January 1961 the fiasco at the Bay of Pigs, the costly stalemate
in Vietnam, the shame of the Pueblo, the deterioration of a North Atlantic Treaty
Organization which has been kicked out of France and forced to take refuge in
Belgium, the U.S. non-policy in the Mideast which failed to prevent the lightning
war of June 1967 and now hinders face-to-face peace negotiations between the
Israelis and the Arabs while Soviet influence in the Middle East grows, the
continuing failure of the Alliance for Progress, the waste and corruption in the
foreign aid program, the threat that the Soviet Union is overtaking us in nuclear
capability if she has not already passed us.
This is the kind of bankrupt government that Hubert Humphrey would like to
sell the American people for another four years--a party that has already plunged
the Nation into bankruptcy in foreign affairs and near-bankruptcy in its financial
affairs.
The American people are coming to realize that the National Democratic Party
has mismanaged our foreign affairs and our domestic affairs and brought this Nation
to the brink of ruin. I am confident they will turn to the Republican Party in
November.
Johnson-Humphrey Administration mismanagement of our national affairs
clearly extends to agriculture. It is utterly fantastic that the Administration
would ask Congress to write into permanent law a farm program that has produced one
of the lowest parity ratios of all time.
The Food and Agriculture Act of 1965 has not worked well, and that is why
Bill Wampler and other Republicans are insisting on something better. When the
Act became effective, the farm parity ratio stood at 81. Since then it has dropped
steadily to the ridiculously low figure of 73. Even the adjusted parity ratio--the
one which includes direct payments to farmers--has dropped to 79 after reaching
87 in January 1966. That's an eight-point drop in two years. We must do better.
Turn the leadership of this country over to the Republican Party and we will do
better.
This is what the Nation desperately needs--a change in national leadership,
Republican leadership that will steer this country in a New Direction, away from
$25 billion deficits and away from the permissiveness that breeds riots, away from
(more)
-4-
a rising national crime rate and the philosophy that whatever you can get away with
is all right.
We all want a better society. You know and I know that we can build a
better society only if we have a lawful society.
We all want progress. You know and I know that we can make progress only
with a sound dollar, not with the deteriorating dollar of the Johnson-Humphrey
Administration.
This is a crucial year for America. This is a crucial year for the South.
Perhaps more than at any other time it is important that Southerners ask themselves
whether unquestioning affiliation with the Democratic Party makes sense. I hope
that every Southerner who is inclined to vote Democratic will look at the two major
parties and ask himself, honestly, which party best represents his own thinking.
If he will do that, I do not fear for the outcome--either in the Ninth District of
Virginia or elsewhere in this rapidly changing region.
Let him consider, too, that crime is the No. 1 problem in America today and
yet the Johnson-Humphrey Administration failed to move with urgency toward a
solution to that problem. Let him remember, too, that it was only because of
Republicans in Congress that federal grants under the new Omnibus Anti-Crime Bill
will go to the states and add to crime-fighting muscle on a statewide basis.
Crime knows no jurisdictional boundaries. It does not stop at the city line.
The national crime rate continued to mount while the Johnson-Humphrey Administration
and congressional advocates of direct federal funding of local law enforcement
withheld anti-crime funds from the states.
Republicans advanced no less than 31 proposals to strengthen law enforcement
in this country while the majority party plotted how to bypass the states in the
war on crime. This was a shocking exercise in the mis-use of political power. And
all America has suffered as a result.
I am convinced that America cannot afford another four years of Democratic
rule in Washington.
We need Republican leadership in Washington. We need Republican control of
the Congress. We need a Republican in the White House.
That is why I hope Southerners will not waste their votes by following
George Wallace into the wasteland of third-party politics. A vote for George
Wallace is a vote that is thrown away. Southerners should make their votes count
by voting for the Republican candidate for President.
In this age of crisis the Nation sorely needs a new leader with a strong
(more)
-5-
sense of mission-- and the American people will find that leader in the Republican
Party.
We need a mature and clear-thinking leader to bring the Vietnam War to an
honorable conclusion, to steer us clear of humiliating incidents like the Pueblo
affair, to curb inflation, to restore world confidence in the dollar, to turn the
national crime rate downward, and to wipe out the slums and build a new America.
I say the November election is crucial because this country has come to a
fork in the road and the people must decide--will it be revolution or a new forward
burst of progress for all our people generated by a reaffirmation of the principles
which have made America the great and glorious land that it is?
I think the American people will come up with the right answer.
######
distribution. 70 Capies Mr. Ford
mailing 7/1/68
M Office Copy
CONGRESSMAN
NEWS
GERALD R. FORD
HOUSE REPUBLICAN LEADER
RELEASE
An Address by Rep. Gerald R. Ford, R-Mich:, House Republican Leader, at the Virginia
Ninth District Republican Convention at 1:30 P.M., Saturday, June 29, 1968, at
Abingdon, Virginia.
It is wonderful to be in Bill Wampler's district talking with all you fine
people.
It is always a pleasure for me to be in Bill Wampler's company because Bill
is one of the really solid members of the U.S. House of Representatives, a man who
is keenly attentive to the needs of his congressional district and an honest spokes-
man for the people there. I can assure all of the voters of the Ninth Virginia
District that Bill Wampler is doing a great job on the House Agriculture Committee
and that nobody excels him as a conscientious and hard-working legislator.
If anyone knows what's best for this congressional district, Bill Wampler
does. He is looking out for his people every minute of the day. And he handles
every dollar of the taxpayer's money just as though it were coming out of his own
pocket. I can personally testify to the fact that Bill Wampler is a great champion
of government economy, and the record of the votes he cast in the 90th Congress
will bear me out.
We need men like Bill Wampler in the Congress--men who will turn over a tax
dollar at least twice before they spend it and then try to make it go twice as far;
legislators who believe ours is a government of laws and not of men and who will
never turn our country over to the forces of anarchy; men who love the tillers of
the soil and the miners who dig riches out of the depths of the earth, those who
work hard and are proud of working for a living; legislators who believe that the
states and local communities should be strong and vigorous units of government and
not appendages of the federal bureaucratic octopus.
Yes, we badly need men like Bill Wampler in the House of Representatives, and
so I ask you today to do everything possible to send Bill back to Washington next
January.
I am very much aware of the heavy Democratic registration in Virginia's
Ninth Congressional District. This does not worry me as much in 1968 as in previous
election years, and I'll tell you why.
It doesn't worry me because I think we will get the right answers and
Republican votes if we just let the voters know what has happened to this country
FORD
in the last seven years. Just ask the people of the Ninth District these questions:
LIBRARY
(more)
-2-
Which political party is it which has spent this Nation into a financial
crisis without solving the people's problems?
Which party is it which has poured billions of dollars into the problems
of the cities only to have them erupt in riots snuffing out 123 lives and costing
nearly a billion dollars just in the last year and a half?
Which party is it which has pumped billions of dollars into a War on
Poverty--in which the opening gun was fired just before the 1964 election--only to
have the Poor march on Washington four years later and threaten to turn the Nation's
capital upside down?
Which party is it which has bogged this Nation down in a land war in Vietnam,
where nearly 30,000 Americans have lost their lives and some $70 billion of our
wealth has been dissipated?
Which party is it which is about to impose an income tax increase on the
American people to offset its extravagant federal spending?
The National Democratic Party not only has failed to solve America's
problems, it has created crushing new ones.
Ask the people of your district to look at what has happened to America in
the last seven years.
We have become involved in a no-win war which the contenders for the
Democratic Presidential nomination in 1968 would end by bringing the Communists
into a coalition government--while the Southvietnamese Government arrests a former
Presidential candidate for making such a proposal.
The cost of living has raced upward by nearly 20 per cent and while it used
to be said that a fool and his money are soon parted now this tragedy happens to
all of us under Democrat inflation.
The national crime rate has jumped 88 per cent while our population has
increased 10 per cent.
Europeans have lost confidence in the dollar and have nearly drained this
country of its gold supply.
Our paper money has become exactly that--because the Johnson-Humphrey-
McCarthy Democratic Party has removed the 25 per cent gold backing from our
currency.
For more than five months a fourth-rate Communist power has held a United
States intelligence ship and 82 crewmen captive after attacking the vessel with
impunity and killing one of the crew.
It was clearly a lack of preparedness by the Johnson-Humphrey Administration
(more)
-3-
to deal with an incident like the Pueblo affair that resulted in the capture of
the ship and the crew.
This is all part of the record of the Democratic Administrations and the
Democratic-controlled Congresses which have guided this country's fortunes and
misfortunes since January 1961 the fiasco at the Bay of Pigs, the costly stalemate
in Vietnam, the shame of the Pueblo, the deterioration of a North Atlantic Treaty
Organization which has been kicked out of France and forced to take refuge in
Belgium, the U.S. non-policy in the Mideast which failed to prevent the lightning
war of June 1967 and now hinders face-to-face peace negotiations between the
Israelis and the Arabs while Soviet influence in the Middle East grows, the
continuing failure of the Alliance for Progress, the waste and corruption in the
foreign aid program, the threat that the Soviet Union is overtaking us in nuclear
capability if she has not already passed us.
This is the kind of bankrupt government that Hubert Humphrey would like to
sell the American people for another four years--a party that has already plunged
the Nation into bankruptcy in foreign affairs and near-bankruptcy in its financial
affairs.
The American people are coming to realize that the National Democratic Party
has mismanaged our foreign affairs and our domestic affairs and brought this Nation
to the brink of ruin. I am confident they will turn to the Republican Party in
November.
Johnson-Humphrey Administration mismanagement of our national affairs
clearly extends to agriculture. It is utterly fantastic that the Administration
would ask Congress to write into permanent law a farm program that has produced one
of the lowest parity ratios of all time.
The Food and Agriculture Act of 1965 has not worked well, and that is why
Bill Wampler and other Republicans are insisting on something better. When the
Act became effective, the farm parity ratio stood at 81. Since then it has dropped
steadily to the ridiculously low figure of 73. Even the adjusted parity ratio--the
one which includes direct payments to farmers--has dropped to 79 after reaching
87 in January 1966. That's an eight-point drop in two years. We must do better.
Turn the leadership of this country over to the Republican Party and we will do
better.
This is what the Nation desperately needs--a change in national leadership,
Republican leadership that will steer this country in a New Direction, away from
$25 billion deficits and away from the permissiveness that breeds riots, away from
(more)
-4-
a rising national crime rate and the philosophy that whatever you can get away with
is all right.
We all want a better society. You know and I know that we can build a
better society only if we have a lawful society.
We all want progress. You know and I know that we can make progress only
with a sound dollar, not with the deteriorating dollar of the Johnson-Humphrey
Administration.
This is a crucial year for America. This is a crucial year for the South.
Perhaps more than at any other time it is important that Southerners ask themselves
whether unquestioning affiliation with the Democratic Party makes sense. I hope
that every Southerner who is inclined to vote Democratic will look at the two major
parties and ask himself, honestly, which party best represents his own thinking.
If he will do that, I do not fear for the outcome--either in the Ninth District of
Virginia or elsewhere in this rapidly changing region.
Let him consider, too, that crime is the No. 1 problem in America today and
yet the Johnson-Humphrey Administration failed to move with urgency toward a
solution to that problem. Let him remember, too, that it was only because of
Republicans in Congress that federal grants under the new Omnibus Anti-Crime Bill
will go to the states and add to crime-fighting muscle on a statewide basis.
Crime knows no jurisdictional boundaries. It does not stop at the city line.
The national crime rate continued to mount while the Johnson-Humphrey Administration
and congressional advocates of direct federal funding of local law enforcement
withheld anti-crime funds from the states.
Republicans advanced no less than 31 proposals to strengthen law enforcement
in this country while the majority party plotted how to bypass the states in the
war on crime. This was a shocking exercise in the mis-use of political power. And
all America has suffered as a result.
I am convinced that America cannot afford another four years of Democratic
rule in Washington.
We need Republican leadership in Washington. We need Republican control of
the Congress. We need a Republican in the White House.
That is why I hope Southerners will not waste their votes by following
George Wallace into the wasteland of third-party politics. A vote for George
Wallace is a vote that is thrown away. Southerners should make their votes count
by voting for the Republican candidate for President.
In this age of crisis the Nation sorely needs a new leader with a strong
(more)
-5-
sense of mission--and the American people will find that leader in the Republican
Party.
We need a mature and clear-thinking leader to bring the Vietnam War to an
honorable conclusion, to steer us clear of humiliating incidents like the Pueblo
affair, to curb inflation, to restore world confidence in the dollar, to turn the
national crime rate downward, and to wipe out the slums and build a new America.
I say the November election is crucial because this country has come to a
fork in the road and the people must decide--will it be revolution or 8 new forward
burst of progress for all our people generated by a reaffirmation of the principles
which have made America the great and glorious land that it is?
I think the American people will come up with the right answer.
######