The Nation: A Small Paul Revere

Last summer, after Richard Nixon announced his Peking trip, a dozen conservatives, including National Review Editor William F. Buckley Jr., gathered at the University Club in Manhattan to publicly "suspend" their support of the Administration. Since then, conservatives have also been upset by Taiwan's expulsion from the U.N., which the Administration could not prevent. The President has committed other heresies, notably the wage-price freeze, which violates the dogmas of free enterprise. Now the so-called Manhattan Twelve have decided to take stronger measures by tapping a like-minded conservative, Ohio Republican John M. Ashbrook, 43, to run against Nixon as a right-wing gadfly in next year's primaries.

Ashbrook, who has represented Ohio's rural 17th district for six terms, has been part of the conservative pantheon since 1964, when he was one of Barry Goldwater's earliest boosters. Though he has not firmly decided to run, he would plainly relish setting out on what he calls "a small Paul Revere ride" through New Hampshire, Florida and perhaps other primary states. But why would Bill Buckley's group choose an unknown to sound the conservatives' alarm? They had little choice. Quietly, Nixon has already won pledges of allegiance from all the big guns on the right, including Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, John Tower—and Bill's brother James Buckley, the New York Senator.