Founding Emil Frankel and the Bow Group Emil Frankel was a Harvard law student in the early 1960s. He had studied in England on a Fulbright scholarship. While in England, he met members of a group called the
Bow Group. The Bow Group founders had been "dissatisfied with the Conservative Party's image as 'the Stupid Party'." The Bow Group impressed Frankel, particularly regarding the level of detail that its members applied to study public policy problems and the proactive way its members became experts on policy topics. At the same time John S. Saloma III was a professor at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Like Frankel, Saloma had studied in England on a Fulbright scholarship. Both Frankel and Saloma became editors at
Advance magazine. Newspapers around the U.S. published highlights of the manifesto. The
New York Herald Tribune published it in full. Another voice was President (and Republican)
Dwight D. Eisenhower, who wrote "my delight that an obviously intelligent group of people has taken the trouble to voice its consensus on this important subject, and also to express my basic agreement in the mainstream of its thinking."
The Ripon Papers The Ripon Society wrote its first public statement in the weeks that followed Kennedy's assassination and published the statement on January 6, 1964: While we yet sorrow, so must we seize this moment before our thoughts slip away to be lost in the noise of 'life as usual.' It is in this context that we have chosen to speak. We speak as a group of young Republicans to that generation which must bear the responsibility for guiding our party and our country over the coming decades. We speak for a point of view in the Republican Party that has too long been silent. We believe that the future of our party lies not in extremism, but in moderation. The moderate course offers the Republican Party the best chance to build a durable majority position in American politics. This is the direction the party must take if it is to win the confidence of the "new Americans" who are not at home in the politics of another generation: the new middle classes of the suburbs of the North and West – who have left the Democratic cities but have not yet found a home in the Republican party; the young college graduates and professional men and women of our great university centers – more concerned with "opportunity" than "security", the moderate of the new South – who represent the hope for peaceful racial adjustment and who are insulted by a racist appeal more fitting another generation. These and others like them hold the key to the future of our politics. We believe that the Republican Party should accept the challenge to fight for the middle ground of American politics. The party that will not acknowledge this political fact of life and courageously enter the contest for power does not merit and cannot possibly win the majority support of the American people. In 1962, Saloma founded the American Bow Group, a society of university intellectuals. In 1963, the American Bow Group became the Ripon Society. In his career, Saloma's work focused mainly on the American political party system. Participating in a project studying the U.S. Congress sponsored by the
American Political Science Association and the Carnegie Foundation, he published
Congress and the New Politics in 1969 which dealt with the workloads in the offices of members of Congress. This led to an interest in the congressional budget process and the possibilities of computer use in the daily job of a representative. a U.S. congressman, and
Lee Huebner.
Former leaders • Auspitz, Josiah Lee •
Frenzel, Bill. Chairman Emeritus. Former U.S. Congressman. • Dubke, Michael • Gerstell, Glenn S. • Gillette, Howard F. National president 1971–1972. • Huebner, Lee. Co-founder and former president. Former special assistant to President Nixon. • Kellogg, Frederick R. • Kessler, Rick. From 2004 to 2009, Rick Kessler served as the Ripon Society's president. When he retired from the position in 2009, he became the group's president emeritus. Kessler began working for the group in 1981 as the executive director. Previously, he worked on the presidential campaign of John Anderson and served on the inaugural committee for newly elected President Ronald Reagan in 1980–1981. •
Leach, Jim. U.S. Congressman from Iowa. •
Petri, Tom. U.S. Congressman from Wisconsin. Co-founder. • Saloma III, John S. Founding President. •
Smith, Peter, U.S. Congressman from Vermont.
1964 Presidential campaign A
Slate article in 1998 attributed the Ripon's founding, in part, to "Republicans put off by the vulgarity of the Goldwater campaign ..." In 1964, conservative activists within the Republican Party nominated
Barry Goldwater for president. The Ripon Society argued against Goldwater, writing:We believe that the future of our party lies not in extremism, but in moderation. The moderate course offers the Republican Party the best chance to build a durable majority position in American politics. This is the direction the party must take if it is to win the confidence of the 'new Americans' who are not at home in the politics of another generation: the new middle classes of the suburbs of the North and West – who have left the Democratic cities but have not yet found a home in the Republican party; the young college graduates and professional men and women of our great university centers – more concerned with 'opportunity' than 'security'; the moderates of the new South – who represent the hope for peaceful racial adjustment and who are insulted by a racist appeal more fitting another generation. These and others like them hold the key to the future of our politics. ==Journals and publications==