Doing the Republican Jostle

There's life in the Grand Old Party yet

The 700 Southern Republican leaders cheered lustily last week when Ronald Reagan accused Jimmy Carter of signing a "fatally flawed" Panama Canal treaty. They applauded enthusiastically when John Connally charged that the Democrats stood for the three Rs: "retrenchment, resignation and retreat." They gave warm welcomes to Senators Howard Baker and Robert Dole. The purpose of the three-day meeting at Disney World's Contemporary Resort-Hotel at Orlando, Fla., was to discuss strategy for next year's elections. But the G.O.P. faithful eagerly took a sneak preview of 1980 by sizing up four of the many presidential candidates in waiting, and most liked what they saw. Declared Florida G.O.P. Chairman Bill Taylor: "Our time has come again. All we want is a winner."

As the backslapping and flesh pressing in Orlando show, there's always more room for maneuver and jostling for pre-eminence in the party out of the White House. For those Republicans with larger ambitions, nothing is excluded, everything is possible, and who knows what could happen by 1980?

The best-organized Republican, by far, is Ronald Reagan, 66, who used about $1 million in leftover money from last year's campaign to set up a political action group called Citizens for the Republic. Its executive director is Lyn Nofziger, a longtime Reagan sidekick, and its steering committee sports almost every key Reagan adviser from the '76 campaign, including Campaign Manager John Sears. So far the committee has added about $250,000 in contributions, to be distributed to conservative candidates for Congress and state offices next year.

The group has hired Pollster Richard Wirthlin, who worked for Reagan in '76, to analyze every congressional district in the country. Reagan can also call for help from an active old boy network. It includes G.O.P. state chairmen and national committee members in 28 states. Beyond that, Reagan backers from ten Western states have formed their own organization. Says a top adviser: "All they are waiting for is for him to say 'Go.' "

Reagan delivers up to a dozen speeches a month, writes columns twice weekly for 125 newspapers, and tapes weekly five-minute messages for 275 radio stations. His favorite targets: Big Government, Carter's Panama Canal treaty and Edward Kennedy's cradle-to-grave national health-insurance program, which Reagan describes as "the sperm-to-worm plan." At the same time, he preaches party unity to keep from scaring off Republican moderates. Says he: "Let's put an end to giving each other political saliva tests to establish the degree of our Republican purity." Says a close associate: "I feel certain that he would like to run again."

If he does, top Republicans expect Gerald Ford, 64, no matter how much he relishes retirement, to jump in, largely out of loyalty to the anti-Reaganites who supported him in 1976. In contrast to Reagan's courting of the party organization--traditionally dominated by conservatives--Ford has been playing the elder statesman. By Christmas, he will have logged more than 200,000 miles lecturing college students, playing in golf tournaments, and attending public gatherings. His strategy is to stay as prominent as possible, so that he can move fast if Reagan announces his candidacy. Observes David Liggett, Ford's 1976 coordinator in California: "It's like they are playing a giant game of chicken, speeding at 110 m.p.h. at each other, each thinking the other is going to swerve."

Many Republicans are concerned that Ford and Reagan may be too old the next time around (although Reagan bumper stickers proclaim 69 IS NOT TOO OLD IN '80) and want to avoid another bitter primary contest. Says a former Ford associate: "A large segment of the party feels the future lies with a new personality, that the split was so bad between Reagan and Ford that a new campaign by them wouldn't do anyone any good." Heading the list of possible substitutes are three not-so-new faces:

Howard Baker, 52, the nimble Senate minority leader from Tennessee, marshaled the Senate forces that killed Carter's bill for federal financing of congressional campaigns and helped write the G.O.P. alternatives to the Administration's energy-and economic-stimulus programs. He has not taken a position on the new Panama Canal treaty; if he backs it, he risks losing support from conservatives. Indeed, the treaty question is symptomatic of his more general problem. Explains a Republican Party official: "Baker has to make his bed and lie in it. He's either got to become a Reagan conservative, which on his voting record he could be, or he has to become a moderate, which his rhetoric could support."

John Connally, 60, the Democratic convert who is trying to overcome Republican stalwarts' distrust of him as a turncoat, lately by heading a drive to raise $1.5 million to buy the G.O.P. national headquarters building in Washington. Taking a page from Reagan's book, he has also formed the John Connally Citizens Forum to raise funds for Republican candidates in 1978, and for the 80 or so politicking trips he plans on their behalf. Though charming and forceful, he could be hurt by his past alliances with Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, and by his indictment--though he was acquitted--on charges of accepting bribes from milk producers when he was Nixon's Treasury Secretary.

Robert Dole, 54, the Kansas Senator who overdid sarcasm on the stump as Ford's running mate in 1976 (and many people thought he cost the party the election), is now trying to show he has positions that span a bit beyond the predictable right. This year Dole has made 160 speeches outside Washington and has churned out dozens of statements twitting the Administration; last week he denounced moves for closer ties between the U.S. and Cuba. Sensing an opportunity to one-up Baker on Panama, Dole may try to lead the antitreaty forces in the Senate.

Among the others eager to be in the play for 1980 is James Thompson, 41, who was a hard-driving federal prosecutor in Chicago and won big as Governor of Illinois last year. He gets 300 speech invitations a week and carefully chooses those that will enhance his national stature. But he needs to win re-election by a wide margin next year before he can consider making a serious run for President. George Bush, 53, the former everything (CIA director, U.N. ambassador, national party chairman, etc.), frequently sallies from Houston to address party gatherings in other states. But he has one major liability: he has not won an election since running for Congress in 1966. No matter. Given the example of Jimmy Who, right now almost any nationally known Republican can indulge in fantasies.

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