Only 725 Days

Vacationing in Jamaica's Montego Bay last week, Barry Goldwater and his top lieutenants engaged in what G.O.P. National Chairman Dean Burch described as "mopping-up operations." Many Republicans were wondering, however, just what was left to mop up.

Traitors & Scalawags. In their prolonged post-mortem on the 1964 election, most Republicans could agree to the fact that it had been an awful show. Beyond that, there was static from all parts of the party. Cried Actor Ronald Reagan, co-chairman of California's Citizens for Goldwater and an early-form pick among right-wingers for the state's 1966 gubernatorial nomination: "We don't intend to turn the Republican Party over to the traitors in the battle just ended." Between rounds of golf, Goldwater himself took time out to lambast such middle-roading Republicans as Governors Nelson Rockefeller of New York and George Romney of Michigan and Senators Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania and Thomas Kuchel of California as "socalled Republicans." Barry suggested that "the time has come for a real realignment of the parties," naming them "liberal and conservative," not "Democratic and Republican."

South Carolina's Senator Strom Thurmond, whose recent bolt to the G.O.P. probably saddened more Republicans than it did Democrats, voiced the hope that the G.O.P. "eventually will become the conservative party in the nation, in spite of Rockefeller and his ilk." If not, added Thurmond, whose losing Dixiecrat defection from the Democratic Party in 1948 had apparently taught him nothing, "then some other party would have to arise."

If Thurmond was anxious to drum the liberals out of the party, some liberals and moderates were equally eager for a purge of ultraconservatives. Senator Scott, who barely survived the Johnson landslide in his bid for reelection, insisted that "Southern scalawags" and the "hardcore radical right" be thrown out of the G.O.P. "The present party leadership," he said, "must be replaced --all of it." Some moderates were upset over reports that the G.O.P. had wound up the 1964 campaign with a $1,200,000 surplus instead of the usual deficit, suggested that the money was withheld to strengthen Goldwater's grip on the party.

Trying hard to make themselves heard above all the noise, a few Republicans sensibly pleaded for unity. "We're not going to improve our situation by cutting each other up," said Iowa's Senator Jack Miller. Washington's Governor-elect Daniel J. Evans, a 39-year-old engineer who upset two-term Democrat Albert Resellini, urged the party to "reconstruct our framework in terms that will encompass a variety of opinion." Former Vice President Richard Nixon, who had reinstituted himself as the favorite target of some cartoonists by attacks on his fellow moderate Nelson Rockefeller, now called for a centrist leadership that would make enough room for both liberals and conservatives--but not for "the 'nut' left or the 'nut' right." In case anybody was wondering who might qualify as a centrist leader, Nixon pointed out: "I'm perhaps at dead center."

A New Unity. Almost submerged in the bickering over the party leadership was an even more important question. What were the party's goals to be? From Maine's Governor John Reed, a moderate, came a reminder that while Barry Goldwater was overwhelmingly rejected at the polls, it would be unwise to jettison everything that he stood for as well. "The emphasis which he placed on restraining the growth of big government, on the importance of moral standards, on strength in the face of the Communist menace, should not go unheeded," said Reed at the Yale Political Union. What was really wrong with Goldwater's candidacy, he added, was that he and his aides "lacked the ability to compromise when party unity was so essential."

A host of plans are in the works to fashion a new unity. The 17 G.O.P. Governors and Governors-elect may meet next month to establish a new leadership agency that, in the words of Idaho's Robert Smylie, chairman of the Republican Governors Association, would combine the features of "a formal convention and a continuous council."

Massachusetts Attorney General Edward Brooke, who holds the highest elective office ever attained by a Negro, called for a full-dress convention in 1965 to rewrite the party's conservative 1964 platform and to begin working toward the 1966 elections. Along the same lines, Wisconsin's Representative Melvin Laird, who ingratiated himself with the Goldwaterites by keeping the Platform Committee in line at San Francisco but remains acceptable to most G.O.P. moderates, called for the formation of a broad-based "collective leadership" to fill "the vacuum" that now exists.

Motion & Emotion. Where would all the frantic motion and emotion lead? For the time being, probably nowhere --and as far as the G.O.P. is concerned, that is just as well. "The blood is still too hot and we're still too close to the disaster" to make any major changes, said Nixon. "The first of the year would be the time to decide." Inasmuch as any hasty purges would leave scars that the G.O.P. can scarcely endure in its present battered condition, Nixon has a point.

At the moment, the loudest cries are for the scalp of National Chairman Burch as a symbol of the Goldwater candidacy. Barry says he will fight to keep Burch, who is supposed to serve until after the 1968 convention. But the National Committee is tentatively sched uled to meet in Chicago on Jan. 10, and several members are expected to call for a no-confidence vote at that time.*

Whether Burch survives the vote or is forced out, the fact is that the party cannot afford to waste too much time. For the G.O.P., 1966 is a must year, with elections for a new House, one third of the Senate, and governorships in such key states as New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and California. And 1966 is not all that far off. Said Idaho's Smylie last week, doing some quick computing: "That's in 725 days."

*A strikingly similar situation developed after Tom Dewey's 1948 defeat. With an angry coalition of Taft and Stassen forces denouncing him as "a symbol of Dewey misrule" and demanding his departure, then National Chairman Hugh Scott called a meeting of the committee in wintry Omaha, Neb., in January 1949. As Scott laughingly recalls it, he deliberately chose an inconvenient site in hopes of reducing attendance. His strategy seemed to work, for he survived a confidence vote by a four-vote margin. But six months later, he resigned.

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