Lodge's Return May Split Republicans

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30482, 2 July 1964, Page 13

Lodge's Return May Split Republicans

[Specially written [or the N.Z.P.A. by

FRANK OLIVER]

NEW YORK, July 1.

Ambassador Lodge is home, has shed his diplomatic duties with almost unseemly haste and has dived into the complicated problem which faces the Republican Party.

His return can only sharpen the division in the party, for he is at odds with the Goldwater faction over Vietnam.

There are other differences between what may be called Scranton-Lodge-Rocke-feller Republicans and those who look for leadership to Senator Goldwater. One has to go back a long way to find such a cleavage in Republican ranks, to Teddy Roosevelt, when the split was so pronounced Roosevelt seceded and formed his own Bull Moose Party. The Republican Party in July must decide whether to continue in the middle or make a sharp turn to the Right. Senator Goldwater, when he began the struggle for nomination, said his intention was to give the. voters a choice, meaning a choice between his conservatism and the liberalism which the last four Democratic Presidents have espoused. First Thrusts

Lodge got in his first thrusts at Goldwater before he saw the President or left his job. He gave a description of the ideal Republican candidate, which did not fit the Senator at any point and said that Vietnam should not be an issue in the campaign, that the right course was being followed there and that it would lead to victory. Against that Senator Goldwater has made it clear, as has Mr William Miller, the Republican national chairman, that Vietnam is indeed going to be an election issue. Mr Miller said last Sunday he thought the war in Vietnam had been mismanaged and placed himself with Senator Goldwater in direct opposition to the party’s leading expert on Vietnam—Mr Lodge.

To get a Scranton campaign really rolling it is necessary for a goodly number of those delegates listed as “favouring Goldwater” to say openly or indicate in some clandestine way that they are switching from the Senator to the Governor. If Scranton is to get anywhere, the first ballot at the convention must be indecisive. If Senator Goldwater does not get it on the first ballot anything can happen. The Associated Press poll, which has been very re-

liable in past years, says Goldwater has 438 votes “committed, instructed and pledged” to him and 251 who favour him, which totals 34 more than necessary. Scranton has stepped up his campaign and is speaking more forcefully and much more critically of Goldwater. Now he will have the vigor-

ous assistance of Mr Lodge, whose return and whose statements have helped to dramatise the difference between the candidates and their political philosophies. The job is not new for Mr Lodge but he has left himself a pitifully short time in which to accomplish his ends. In 1952, when he saw control of his party slipping away to the conservatives, led by Robert Taft, he flew to Paris and persuaded General Eisenhower to run. He was phenomenally successful —and earned the undying enmity of the right wing of the party. He did not have to persuade Scranton to run, but two weeks is a very short time in which to persuade a big enough section of Republicans to think again before they turn the party to the Right, a road the moderates believe to lead to the political wilderness.