ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 examines the political implications of the service party approach at the national level. That the service model implicitly supported the Right’s hold on party policy quickly became clear from how Bliss and the RNC leadership managed a newly formed leadership policy group, the Republican Coordinating Committee, which had been proposed just prior to Bliss’s arrival. Although ostensibly a forum for hashing out the details of party policy, the RCC would serve primarily as an institutional mechanism for cooling partisan tempers, and, in the process, deflecting, in the interest of party unity, any challenges to the Right’s continued leadership role within the party. But the tacit support the service party lent the Right became even more evident as opposition emerged within the party to the service approach in the lead-up to the 1966 and 1968 elections, notably from Conservatives within the Young Republicans and the National Federation of Republican Women. Rather than try to reform either group, Bliss and the party leadership responded to the infighting by attempting to rally both groups behind the organizational goals of the service party, specifically the objective of building a stronger, and more unified national party structure. The RNC leadership pushed each group to focus their efforts on party-building and electoral preparation regardless of their ideological commitments. But, by doing so, the party leadership effectively left unchecked the growing strength of the conservative Right within both organizations.
