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  • Firing Line The Ripon Society (Season 4, Episode 7)
  • TV Episode | Talk-Show

Firing Line

The Ripon Society (Season 4, Episode 7)
TV Episode | Talk-Show
In this 1969 episode, Harvard alumni J. Lee Auspitz and Thomas Petri debate the future of the Republican Party with interviewer William F. Buckley. Auspitz and Petri represent the Ripon Society, an American centrist Republican public ...See moreIn this 1969 episode, Harvard alumni J. Lee Auspitz and Thomas Petri debate the future of the Republican Party with interviewer William F. Buckley. Auspitz and Petri represent the Ripon Society, an American centrist Republican public policy organization. As moderate Republicans, Auspitz and Petri insist Richard Nixon's Republican Party must ideologically drift leftward to become a broader coalition and to win more electoral votes. Buckley counters that Nixon should veer rightwards in order to win over disaffected Southern voters in the near future. Auspitz adamantly disputes this possibility. He insists that Nixon cannot win the Deep South to the Republican cause so long as (1) Governor George Wallace remains a thirty-party option and (2) Senator Ted Kennedy looms as a future Democratic candidate for president. By 1972, of course, these two factors were removed and many Southern voters supported Nixon's Republican Party. See less
Read more: Plot summary
Director
Garth Dietrick
Producer
Warren Steibel
See all filmmakers & crew (6)
Status
Edit Released
Updated Feb 24, 1969
Release date
Feb 24, 1969 (United States)
Awards
Series awards
Won 1 Primetime Emmy Award.

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6 cast members
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