Politics '84 -- Reemerging Activism: Democratic Study Unit in Ferment
WASHINGTON -- Old Home Week is approaching for "McCarthy's Marauders."</br></br>That's what they called themselves then, that motley group of Democrats plotting to commit liberalism in the House of Representatives. The year was 1957. Their leader was an obscure congressman named Eugene McCarthy, still a decade away from the presidential race that would make him famous. His followers were congressmen like George McGovern, Stewart Udall and James Roosevelt.</br></br>To compare the informal Marauders to the formal House organization that in 1959 would grow out of their plotting, the Democratic Study Group, is to compare a guerrilla band to a mechanized infantry division. Today's DSG has an operating budget of more than $700,000. It has offices, researchers -- and an impressive record of spearheading liberal fights. Yet when the old Marauders gather this fall for the silver anniversary of the DSG's founding, they'll encounter one thing, at least, that remains exactly the same: an internal debate over how liberals can expand their influence in a conservative period.</br></br>For the venerable DSG -- "the pumping heart of House procedural reform," Majority Whip Thomas Foley calls it -- is once again in ferment.</br></br>In 1984, as 25 years earlier, House liberals see their fondest hopes thwarted by a Republican White House. And while today's liberals are far happier with their House leadership than the liberals of 1959 were, there's nevertheless an undercurrent of grumbling that it's too timid about standing up to the White House. The problem, as in 1959, is that the liberals alone are well short of a House majority. And the question is whether they should compromise or fight for principle, even in the face of certain defeat.