Republicans: Sounding the South

• Share

In their quest for delegates last week, Ronald Reagan at times sounded like Nelson Rockefeller and Rockefeller sounded like Richard Nixon—when he could make himself heard. Both Ronnie and Rocky berated Bobby for sounding like Barry, and Dick, counting his delegates, at first said hardly a word.

Right now, "the country may want a Neville Chamberlain," a Reagan aide declared, but "sooner or later, Winston Churchill is going to be President." To earn the comparison, Reagan expended sweat and toil. He took a four-day swing through Louisiana, Florida, North Carolina, Illinois and Ohio to raise $800,000 for the party. In the process, he damaged his non-candidate pose. He is only awaiting the national convention to move, Reagan conceded, picking a phrase from Rocky to explain that he will not actively compete until then in order to avoid "divisiveness" within the G.O.P. On more familiar ground, the Californian urged that "we kick the devil" out of the North Vietnamese if they do not negotiate sincerely. He rapped R.F.K. ("When he stands before a Chamber of Commerce, he sounds like Goldwater"), termed the New Left "unwashed members of the old right," and called former Secretary of Defense McNamara an "inspired accountant" who had made "the missile gap a reality." He aimed his sharpest rockets and gags at Lyndon Johnson.

Quitting the Case. "We are called a sick America," said Reagan in Charlotte, N.C., "and now the doctor tells us he no longer has a remedy, so he is quitting the case. Unable to cure the dollar, he has settled for passing the buck."

As for Rocky, he decided to slug it out with Nixon, then delivered an economics speech that seemed a pale mirror image of Nixon's words. Like Reagan, Rocky toured the South, even met the Californian in a brief confrontation. As usual, he carefully refrained from attacking Reagan but finally had to admit: "We do not share a common position on many issues"—damping the ubiquitous talk of an R. & R. ticket, and thus presumably pleasing both his own liberal followers and Reagan's conservative ones. In Atlanta, Rocky ran into the most antagonistic audience he has seen since the 1964 Republican Convention. At Negro Spelman College, fostered and funded by Rockefellers, his speech was shredded by black hecklers who screeched, "Get your money out of South Africa!", "Get off the stage!", "Rocky is a racist!" and "Rockefeller, go home!"

Damning Democrats. Rocky nonetheless damned Democrats with a will. Kennedy, he said, went through Indiana and Nebraska as "a study in conspicuous conservatism." Echoing another theme used by Nixon and other Republicans, the Governor pointed to the President's "grave failures of leadership" as evidence that "we may have done more damage to the well-being of lower-income families through inflation than we have done good for them through all the so-called 'Great Society' programs."