The Only One

For weeks, the slogan had been "Nixon's the One." After Rockefeller's unex pected withdrawal, it might well have been "Nixon's the Only One." Few challenged the happy reaction of one Nixon volunteer in Wisconsin when she heard the news: "We've won! We've won!"

Nixon himself was not so quick to holler victory, though he was as genuinely surprised as anyone else by Rocky's decision. "In politics," he said, "you have contingency plans for just about everything, but our organization had absolutely no contingency plan for anything like this." Still, as he continued his campaign for Wisconsin primary votes, even Nixon had to admit that there was little standing between him and the Republican nomination but some catastrophic blunder of his own. "If we can't get the nomination now," he told TIME'S Loye Miller and John Austin, "we might as well just go out and sit in the sun at Miami."

Rockefeller's withdrawal means a complete change in strategy for Nixon, who can now think more in terms of Nov. 5, rather than Aug. 5, which is the day the G.O.P. Convention begins in Miami Beach. Though his campaign will lose some of its momentum without a preconvention opponent, the problem, Nixon noted jocularly, is one that he can live with. "I can stand a few blows like this," he deadpanned. Nixon, in fact, has always claimed that his target was Lyndon Johnson, not some brother Republican, and with no brother Republican in the way, he can now match actions to words.

The Rubicon. Primary states such as Wisconsin and Oregon can now be given less attention, and Nixon will be free to spend more time—and less money—in SUch big population bases as Illinois, Pennsylvania and Ohio, all of perhaps pivotal importance in November. If all three states have favorite sons who have not yet pledged their Miami delegations to Nixon, what is better than doing two jobs for the price of one? No one will be pressured, Nixon insisted; but with Rocky out of the way, more and more of the G.O.P. Governors, not all of them ardent Nixon supporters, can be expected to jump on his bandwagon of their own volition.

"We will not," he said, "try to strong-arm favorite sons who want to wait until the convention before crossing the Rubicon. But of course it could well be that some of them will be reaching the conclusion that they want to get on the team prior to the time that everyone else jumps on. That's the way the political animal works." The pressure, Nixon believes, will now be off him and on the men who lead the delegations —and might want to be remembered favorably in a Nixon administration.