Republicans: Anchors Aweigh

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Any of them could conceivably wind up on a G.O.P. ticket. "If there's a convention deadlock," says Goldwater, "well, it depends on who is sitting in the balcony, as Willkie was." So crowded is the balcony that one New England politician, asked to suggest a few tickets, rattled off 34 in a matter of seconds. There are so many possible permutations that one Republican Governor declares: "Every time I dream of it, I wake up screaming." Some pairings are merely whimsical: the Brotherhood Ticket of Rockefeller and Rockefeller, whose slogan could be MAKE MONEY, NOT WAR, or the Sunshine Ticket of Reagan and Kirk. Some are quite serious: Nixon and Percy, for example; indeed, some Democrats have already anticipated that combo and dubbed it MR. MEAN & MR. CLEAN.

The possibilities for button makers and punsters are limitless. Romney? How about DUZ DID IT? Morton? Easy —THE SALT OF THE EARTH. Hatfield? THE REAL MCCOY. The Governor of Colorado? ALL FOR LOVE. Percy? MERCY! Or Ford? LORD! Retired Air Force Chief of Staff Curtis LeMay, an all-out hawk who has announced his interest in running, could campaign under the banner, BOMBS AWAY WITH CURT LEMAY.

A.B.J. Despite the plethora of potential candidates, one of the five current leading contenders is almost certain to top the ticket. The reason: "We want a winner, and that means a name candidate," says former Kansas Republican Vice Chairman Mrs. Kathleen Hetcher. Goldwater had to scramble for the nomination in 1964, but the fight might have been far more ferocious had more Republicans felt that victory was possible. Now, Johnson seems highly vulnerable—not necessarily to Mickey Mouse, as Lindsay suggested two weeks ago, but to a skillful, energetic and widely attractive candidate.

Gallup's most recent sampling shows that only 38% of the nation likes the way L.B.J. is handling the presidency—an alltime low for him and a long way from the 80% approval he enjoyed in January 1964. Viet Nam is his foremost problem, and barring either a spectacular military triumph or successful negotiations with Hanoi, a G.O.P. candidate might well argue, a la Eisenhower, that a new Administration is needed to end an unpopular war. The looming threat of inflation—"profitless prosperity" as Washington's Governor Evans calls it—is another bugaboo. The decaying cities and the exploding ghettos could develop into the biggest issue of all. Taken together, the problems are helping to build a formidable "anti" vote—the kind that helped Ike to defeat Adlai Stevenson, and Franklin Roosevelt to unseat Herbert Hoover.

Indeed, Dump-Johnson movements are proliferating, and stickers reading A.B.J. (for Anyone But Johnson) have begun appearing on auto bumpers in Maine. Says Nixon: "Johnson will have it tough in '68. We had to run against his promises in 1964. Now we can run against his performance."