12 Republicans in Search of a Nomination
MOLLISON, ANDREW
Wtshington-USA 12 REPUBLICANS IN SEARCH OF A NOMINATION BY ANDREW MOLLISON Washington Ronald Reagan, Big John Connally, Benjamin Fernandez, Howard Baker, George Bush, Philip Crane, Robert Dole,...
...In addition, massive defections indicate management weaknesses in his staff...
...The only candidate not to hold a press conference or to mingle with the head-table dignitaries before his meal, Reagan was also the only speaker to offer no specific alternatives to the Democratic programs...
...The audience nodded solemnly at his international pronouncements...
...Pressler, 37, has been the junior senator from South Dakota for three-fourths of a year...
...After the convention, he said, he sent emissaries in search of campaign instructions, but Ford's uppity staff kept cold-shouldering them...
...Haig, 54, firmly delivers hawkish sentiments and technocratic obscurantisms that tend to cancel each other out...
...During an elbow-to-elbow stroll through the majestic, manly solitude of Bohemian Grove last July, for example, he told Ford that he had wanted to help in '76...
...But his staff turnover is high, because it is not much fun to sit around and wait for lightning to strike...
...Under a Democratic Administration, inflation has ballooned, recession has arrived, and the national energy policy is a joke...
...This keeps the GOP situation fluid, and gives other Republicans more time to rise closer to Reagan in the polls...
...I made a bunch of money and now I'm running for President of the United States," Fernandez says...
...and if tradition holds, its members will constitute more than 60 per cent of the female delegates to the Republican National Convention in Detroit next summer...
...Crane, 49, talks like Goldwater in '64...
...His exit aroused considerably less applause than his entrance...
...When he speaks of the "oppressed millions" under Communism, he urges his listeners not to "look the other way" while 2.2 million people face death in Cambodia...
...But he has problems: His embarrassing $700,000 direct mail debt—he declared his candidacy 14 months ago —will sop up much of the Federal matching money due to him January 1; and this time around "too much, too early," seems likely to have the same devastating effect as Jerry Brown's "too little, too late" in 1976...
...he demanded...
...No Eisenhower, he is finding that it is easier to be a political general than a politicking general...
...Reagan has tried everything he could think of to placate Ford...
...Instead, he continues to stroll off the golf course every few weeks to announce that he just might like to be crowned President...
...Born in a converted boxcar near Kansas City, he was "scooped up" after college by General Electric as a management trainee, started his own financial consulting firm in California, and survived a brush with the Watergate investigators related to his overen-thusiastic solicitation of gifts for creep from other Hispanic businessmen...
...Until now the sparring between the candidates has been relatively restrained, but the tempo is bound to pick up as the scent of a Republican victory in the 1980 elections gets stronger...
...His sound-alike mentor, Lyndon Johnson, is not mentioned by name...
...Despite differences in style, and in a few instances substance, all favored tax cuts, more defense spending, less Federal regulation of business, and a balanced Federal budget...
...The Federation plausibly claims to be the largest dues-paying volunteer political group in the United States...
...Of course, in the polls Reagan still stands tall, trailed by 10 political dwarfs...
...Ford didn't buy that explanation...
...Self-described as "a moderate conservative," he apparently does not comprehend the ambiguity behind his nickname, "Mr...
...He outlines a new legislative proposal each week...
...Their pro-business, success-oriented speeches drew whoops and loud clapping...
...Some of these men are virtually unknown to the general public, yet that does not daunt them: Obscurity is no longer the problem it once was, not with the spotlight power of television...
...Reagan, preceded by young, well-dressed handlers and surrounded by young, well-dressed body-guards, inspired coos of delight simply by walking into the hall...
...Besides, although the world has nearly forgotten Lloyd Bentsen, Sargent Shriver and Fred Harris, it has not forgotten another near-unknown from the equally bulbous Democratic field of 1976...
...When he inveighs against "obstructive government regulation," he mentions not only business but the doctor-patient decision on abortions...
...Since Democrats control the White House and the Congress, they must bear the ire of the voters, who?unable to reapportion the Congress next year—will have only the Presidential race in which to throw the bumblers out...
...And the survivor will still have to run as a Democrat...
...Baker, the archetypal Senate insider, and Bush, the archetypal appointee, strive mightily to simultaneously stand out and stand in the middle...
...An early clue was provided at last month's 20th biennial convention of the National Federation of Republican Women, held in Indianapolis...
...He puzzles some Republican listeners and irritates others...
...Baker, 53, and Bush, 55, have not wholly resolved a problem cruelly pointed to by comedian Mark Russell, who followed them on the program: "Which one of you is which...
...All knocked Congress, pitied Carter, boggled at recent Kennedy remarks that were interpreted as being considerably less liberal than previous pronouncements, and snickered at the mention of Brown...
...Gasohol...
...So did Stassen, who is 72 this year...
...Although his aides say this will change after he formally enters the race next month, the ladies at the convention Andrew Mollison, a previous New Leader contributor, is chief political writer for the Cox Newspapers...
...Anderson, 57, is the Fred Harris of the 1980 GOP campaign—or, some might say, the last of the Rockefeller Republicans...
...Connally and Fernandez both did extremely well with the Republican women...
...Yet catching up requires each aspirant to establish an individual image, and that is what the Reagan-chasers were seeking to do at Indianapolis...
...Eleven of the candidates spoke before the gathering (only Ford, who says he is not running, failed to make an appearance...
...Jimmy Carter, moreover, is perceived as weak and Teddy Kennedy as a big spender...
...Trying to overcome damage caused by past moderation in international affairs, Baker is slightly more aggressive, Bush downright strident occasionally...
...Not quite a white-collar George Wallace, Connally has disquieted some of his backers with his three sure-fire applause lines—deriding the Japanese, the Germans and the Justice Department suit against the Philadelphia police...
...Dole, 56, is trying—to the extent his war-molded psyche will allow—to be less sarcastic now than he was in his Vice Presidential campaign...
...Ford, however, is still mad at Reagan for sleeping during the campaign against Jimmy Carter...
...So as the 12 competing Republicans see it, one of them will be moving to the White House...
...But which one...
...For two bottom-numbing days the tough-minded conservative women?who have avoided internal dissension by declining to take a stand on the Equal Rights Amendment—took their measure of the field...
...He was the only one booed at the convention...
...His one real competitor is the undeclared Ford, and my guess is that if the former President decided not to run and to back Reagan instead, the 1980 Republican nomination story would end tomorrow...
...Fernandez, 54, basically has one speech, which tells his Horatio Alger life story...
...Connally, 62, runs as a can-do wheeler-dealer who once worked for "a congressman," "a senator" and Presidents Kennedy and Nixon...
...But he seems rich enough and healthy enough to run again in 1984, and 1988, and...
...They received standing ovations at the end of, but not during, their speeches...
...Jerry Brown is finding it difficult to transfer his fund-raising success from free-wheeling California to the national scene, where there is a $1,000 limit on individual gifts...
...He bombed in Indianapolis...
...I am the American Dream...
...Wtshington-USA 12 REPUBLICANS IN SEARCH OF A NOMINATION BY ANDREW MOLLISON Washington Ronald Reagan, Big John Connally, Benjamin Fernandez, Howard Baker, George Bush, Philip Crane, Robert Dole, Alexander Haig, Little John Anderson, Larry Pressler, Harold Stassen, and coy Gerald Ford—not since 1948 have there been so many contenders for the GOP Presidential nomination...
...His domestic postitions remain a mystery...
...In Indianapolis, the response to Baker, Bush, Crane, and Dole was respectful...
...were definitely not enchanted by his lack of concrete statements...
Vol. 62 • October 1979 • No. 20
