Nixon's Moderate Opposition
SANDOZ, ROBERT
WASHINGTON-U.S.A. Nixon's Moderate Opposition By Robert Sandoz Washington The only thing surprising about George Romney's withdrawal from the 1968 Presidential campaign was that it came so soon....
...Fearful of testing their strength lest it be shown wanting, husbanding their prestige until it has evaporated, savoring delicious dreams of ever-higher public office, the moderates act so moderately that unless watched very carefully, they hardly seem to act at all...
...If he does not win a victory at the primary level where the people have some voice, it is improbable that he can win in the state and district conventions where the politicians select most of the delegates to any given national convention?politicians whom Nixon has been ardently courting for 16 years...
...Nixon is ahead, Nixon has been loyal, and Nixon is no Goldwater...
...And yet, sooner or later, he will join the battle...
...Said one Romney strategist, "First they robbed him of his brains, then they robbed him of his humanity," the latter a reference to the Governor's reported insensi-tivity to wounded GI's during a recent Vietnam trip...
...A Rockefeller victory in Oregon would guarantee nothing...
...He believes the U.S...
...Which leaves Oregon...
...Even Democrats will find it hard to hate the '68 Nixon—loose, mellow, candid, self-deprecating...
...One reason it is difficult for the moderates to oppose Nixon on the basis of these policies is that they so faithfully mirror the views of most Republicans...
...There would be nothing very bold about backing into things this way, but then collective boldness has never been the moderates' strong suit...
...For instance, although—incredibly?Rockefeller has not addressed himself to the war in three years, traditionally he has been a hard-line foreign policy man himself...
...The Times calls a Nixon-Rockefeller struggle "an undisguised contest for party mastery between opposing philosophies," but it is not that neat...
...it would become the testing ground for the only thing standing between Nixon and the nomination today—the portrait of the candidate as a born loser?and thus would assume a significance utterly disproportionate to the 18 delegates Oregon will send to the convention in August...
...The moderates must determine whether there is reason enough to actively oppose him, be it on grounds of pragmatism, policy, or—heaven forbid!—principle...
...Nixon headquarters throughout the primary states sport large photos of the candidate thrusting his finger at Khrushchev's chest during the 1959 "kitchen debate...
...Rockefeller's advantages in taking on Nixon in Oregon would include his victory there four years ago, Governor Tom McCalTs announced support and Senator Mark Hatfield's presumed support, and a vigorous write-in campaign which has been under way for some time...
...It was Nelson Rockefeller who fought for a sense of national urgency in the 1960 Republican platform—a fight which won him the animosity of most Republican regulars (and a sense of urgency which later helped John Kennedy win the Pres-dency...
...Nebraska belongs to Nixon...
...The moderates, governors and non-governors alike, reacted to this unexpected largesse with the caution, confusion, and non-cohesion for which they are justly famous...
...even the most enlightened did not take exception to his sometimes vicious partisanship of the 1950s...
...Ronald Reagan is Secretary of Defense, and George Wallace is Attorney General, someone is going to erect a monument in Miami Beach reading, "Here, for personal political reasons, lies the moderate wing of the Republican Party...
...For a man who believed he could run America as well as he ran American Motors, that may seem a small consolation...
...Romney generously—and intentionally—gave Republican moderates the time and the opportunity to get behind someone else without a replay of 1964's last-minute Scran-ton fiasco...
...on the other hand, they the polls decide that Nixon is a probable loser and Rockefeller a possible winner, perhaps at last they will summon the common will to aggressively pursue the nomination for one of their own...
...By gop standards, Rockefeller is clearly a moderate/ liberal, but Nixon is less clearly a conservative—and even if he is one, he is not irresponsibly so...
...must maintain nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union because "our goal is peace and freedom while theirs is victory...
...if they are willing to fight for him both publicly (which at the very least would help him in the polls) and behind the scenes at the state conventions...
...Another seven or eight were reported to favor his nomination, but, said the New York Times, "for personal political reasons consider themselves unable to endorse him publicly at this time...
...Nixon considers foreign policy his forte...
...By the time Romney withdrew, it was too late to mount a dynamic personal campaign in New Hampshire and he had already taken his name off the ballot in Wisconsin...
...it is practical: Can he beat Johnson...
...His problem, as it has always been, is how to get the Republicans to let him try...
...He is not as progressive in all things as they would like, and certainly they would be more comfortable with Rockefeller, but they can live with him...
...His goal is a stable, non-Communist South Vietnam...
...In 1964, it was Rockefeller who took on Barry Goldwater from beginning to end, and who, for his troubles, was booed with such venom by his fellow delegates at the Cow Palace...
...As for policies, Nixon is well within what he calls "the broad and vital center" of Republican thought...
...but Presidential politics are so full of indignities that the man who escapes with his dignity intact is ahead of the game...
...An effort to round up a majority of the 26 Republican governors to express support for Rockefeller aborted immediately...
...To unfurl the Rockefeller banner now is to be anti-Nixon...
...No important Republican voice was raised in protest when Nixon called Adlai Stevenson an appeaser "who got a Ph.D...
...In civil rights, he has been neither a leader nor an obstructionist...
...If they think he can, it is doubtful that they will mount the kind of energetic, party-rending campaign it would take to slow him down and perhaps derail him...
...The fact is, of course, that few Republicans have ever objected to Nixon on principle...
...The May 28 primary would become the only one in which Nixon would face live opposition...
...It comes to this: With a few exceptions, the moderates would not view a Nixon victory in November as a national calamity...
...in other words, they are willing to make the stand that they did not make in 1964?then it is just possible Rockefeller could be the gop 1968 nominee...
...New Hampshire, Oregon, California—Rockefeller has taken that trip...
...He believes, for example, that the U.S...
...Nixon has been campaigning well in Wisconsin, and it is doubtful that Rockefeller will personally challenge him there on a write-in basis...
...There is no evidence that he has since changed his mind, nor is there anything to suggest that he does not believe he can manage the country better than Nixon or Johnson...
...While he does not talk about the war in Vietnam like General LeMay, he does talk about it like Lyndon Johnson...
...Whatever strategy he adopts, Rockefeller's fate depends in large measure on his fellow moderates within the gop: If the leading moderates decide to put those personal political reasons behind them and put their prestige, individually and collectively, on the line for Rockefeller...
...By announcing his decision while most of the Republican governors were gathered together here (for the National Governors' Conference), he was challenging them to take the lead in selecting a candidate who could beat first Nixon, and then Johnson...
...Domestically, he believes "immediate and decisive force must be our first response" to urban violence...
...from Dean Acheson's College of Cowardly Containment," and certainly no Republican considers Nixon's present candidacy an extension of his campaign against Helen Gahagan Douglas...
...Furthermore, Rockefeller's strength lies not with the politicians but with the people...
...less than a third were willing even to urge Rockefeller to enter the Oregon primary...
...What the moderates must decide, and decide fairly soon, is how they feel about Richard Nixon...
...But, on or off the ballot, if Rockefeller does not win in Oregon, Nixon will be nominated by default...
...Rockefeller does not have many options...
...is defending its own vital interests in Vietnam, and that we should apply "massive pressure" against the North, including conventional (not nuclear) bombing of all important targets...
...If he itches for the prize but not for the battle, who is to blame him...
...These are not recruiting posters...
...Someday, when Claude Kirk is President...
...Nor should anyone else...
...Fortunately, Romney stepped out of the race before he was robbed finally of his pride and his dignity...
...So, no doubt, do most Americans...
...Rockefeller cannot expect a convention predisposed against him anyway to nominate a non-candidate on the basis of non-stands...
...If the Green Bay Packers performed like moderate Republicans, Vince Lombardi would have committed suicide years ago...
...For almost no one had taken him seriously as a Presidential candidate since his "brainwashing" faux pas last September...
...It is hard to see how such a strategy could work, however...
...Ideally, Rockefeller would like to bypass the primaries and make his move in the summer, perhaps at the convention itself...
...In The Making of the President 1960, Theodore H. White quotes Rockefeller as telling a friend, "I hate the idea of Dick Nixon being President of the United States...
...While moderation in the pursuit of a Republican Presidential nomination is no virtue, Nelson Rockefeller at least—and alone—has some valid excuses for hesitation...
...Nixon has always preached a hard line against the Communists, and he is not abandoning it now...
...Their chief concern, then, is neither moral nor ideological...
...He has not devised the superpro-grams of a Rockefeller, but he believes (like Lindsay, Kennedy, and others) that private enterprise can play a significant, perhaps dominant role in confronting such problems as slum housing and unemployment...
Vol. 51 • March 1968 • No. 6
