Republicans: The Bomb That Was a Bomb

Only a few months ago it seemed to many Republicans that New York’s Governor Nelson Rockefeller was virtually certain to get the Republican presidential nomination in 1964. But after his remarriage, the polls showed a steep and swift decline in his popularity. Arizona’s Senator Barry Goldwater suddenly became the front runner, and by an impressively wide margin. Governor Rockefeller had to do something, and last week he did.

He issued a strenuous attack on what he called “radical right” elements in the Republican Party. While he avoided calling Barry Goldwater any names, or even naming him, Republican politicians across the nation interpreted the blast as an attempt to slow down the front runner. In a broader view, Rockefeller’s move marked the onset of the Republican Party’s traditional election-year struggle between its liberal and conservative wings.

Immoral Base. “The Republican Party,” Rocky warned, “is in real danger of subversion by a radical, well-financed and highly disciplined minority.” He hit with special vehemence at the wild-about-Barry Young Republican national convention last month in San Francisco (TIME, July 5). Charged Rocky, apparently smarting a bit from Barry’s well-publicized personal triumph: “Every objective observer at San Francisco has reported that the proceedings there were dominated by extremist groups carefully organized, well-financed, and operating through the tactics of ruthless, roughshod intimidation.”

Raising a vital question about the direction of the Republican Party, Rockefeller attacked an election strategy advocated by some of its members: “Completely incredible as it is to me, it is now being seriously proposed to the Republican Party, as a strategy for victory in 1964, that it write off the Negro and other minority groups, that it deliberately write off the great industrial states of the North, that it write off the big cities, and that it direct its appeal primarily to the electoral votes of the South, plus the West and a scattering of other states. The transparent purpose behind this plan is to erect political power on the outlawed and immoral base of segregation, and to transform the Republican Party from a national party of all the people to a sectional party for some of the people.”

Down for the Third Time? The tone of the Rockefeller statement indicated that he meant it to be a bomb, but it proved to be a bomb only in the show-business sense—a dud. Few Republican politicians even gave Rocky credit for being genuinely concerned about the direction of the G.O.P. Most of them appeared to think he was really concerned about his own political future rather than the party’s. Even politicians who agreed with him that the influence of the radical right presents a danger to the Republican Party nonetheless assumed that he was politicking on his own behalf. “Rockefeller’s points were very well made,” said Edward Osgood, a San Francisco Republican leader. “The dangers are very real—and he had to draw attention away from his personal life.”

Outside his own New York, Rockefeller’s bomb drew the most cheers and fewest jeers in Michigan. “The conservatives,” said Detroit’s County Chairman Peter Spivack, “have been deluded into believing they can write off 10% of the nation. This is not only a wrong position; it’s a silly one.” Paul Bagwell, sometime G.O.P. candidate for Governor (1958 and 1960), said the party owed Rockefeller “a great debt of gratitude for speaking out.” But Michigan’s liking for the Rockefeller statement may have been partly traceable to hopes that a Rockefeller-Goldwater deadlock at the 1964 convention might lead to the nomination of Michigan’s own Governor George Romney.

In Goldwater country, Rockefeller’s statement drew a fusillade of angry or contemptuous retorts. Snapped Henry Stollenwerck, Republican member of the Texas state legislature: “it sounds like a frantic statement from a man who has lost and knows it.” Growled a Denver Republican leader, E. D. Nicholson: “Rockefeller is dead.” To Mississippi’s Wirt A. Yerger Jr., G.O.P. state chairman, the statement appeared to be “the scream of a drowning man going down for the third time.”

“To Kick the Democrats.” A few days after issuing his statement, Rockefeller came out and jabbed at Goldwater by name. The radical rightists, he said, could “capture Goldwater if he doesn’t disown them.” When CBS proposed a one-hour Rocky v. Barry TV debate on “the policies and directions of the Republican Party in 1964,” Rockefeller quickly accepted, but Goldwater just as quickly declined. The Senator, said a Goldwater aide, “does not intend to engage in any TV programs or other actions which could have the effect of contributing to disunity in the Republican Party.”

Party unity was much on the minds of many Republicans after the Rockefeller blast. “Our job,” said Florida’s G.O.P. State Chairman Tom Fairfield Brown, “is to kick the Democrats out of office, not fight among ourselves.” Muttered a top Republican congressional leader: “I’m not for running anyone out of the party. There aren’t enough of us now.”

. . .

At President Kennedy’s press conference, a reporter brought up a question involving the basic issue that Rockefeller had raised—where to stand on civil rights. Remarking that “Governor Rockefeller and Senator Goldwater are sharply divided on what sort of an appeal the Republican Party should make to the South in 1964,” the newsman asked the President “whether you plan to either repudiate or reject the support and the votes of segregationists in the South.”

Since the power of the Democratic Party over the past hundred years has to a large extent rested upon the votes of segregationists in the South, Kennedy could hardly be expected to answer yes. What he did was duck the question by making a neat little speech. “I think that the record of this Administration on this matter of equal opportunity is so well-known to everyone, North and South, that in 1964 there will be no difficulty in identifying the record of the Democratic Administration—what it stands for. And my judgment is, based on history, that the Republican Party will also make a clear stand on this issue. I’d be surprised if they didn’t.” The question remained unanswered.