REPUBLICAN WRANGLE

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30592, 7 November 1964, Page 15

REPUBLICAN WRANGLE

(N.Z. Press Association) NEW YORK, November G. The former VicePresident, Richard M. Nixon, and Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller, who live at the same Fifth avenue address, today exchanged bitter charges across the Atlantic in a battle over leadership of the badly split Republican Party.

The former President, Dwight Eisenhower, and the Pennsylvania Governor, William W. Scranton, also made public comments on the future of the crippled “Grand Old Party.” At a press conference, Mr Nixon accused Mr Rockefeller of being the “principal divider” of the party during the Presidential election. He said Mr Rockefeller got his “pound of flesh” out of Barry Goldwater’s crushing defeat. The former Vice-President also was quoted by a national magazine, “Newsweek,” as telling an interviewer that Mr Goldwater “let the nuts” take over the party. In Madrid, Mr Rockefeller replied that Mr Nixon’s comments were “peevish” and had become “typical” of the former Vice-President. Mr Eisenhower, in Augusta, Georgia, blamed the party’s poor showing on a “false image of Republicanism.” He said the party has been hurt, but not destroyed. The former President said it was too early to say who would carry the G.O.P. Presidential banner in 1968, but he added: “Whoever it is must represent a wide spectrum of political thinking.” At a press conference in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Mr Scranton said the party must eliminate the image that it is an “exclusive” organisation. “My impression was that many people voted against the Republican Party this time on that basis,” he said. He said that where Republican candidates ran on “traditional Republican principles”

they were “not repudiated.” Nixon denied he had said “Barry will be dropped like a hot potato” but stood by the prediction that Mr Rockefeller was finished as a party leader. Mr Rockefeller’s office immediately got in touch with the Governor where he and his wife are holidaying in Spain. He promptly issued a statement which said: “This kind of peevish postelection utterance has unfortunately become typical of Mr Nixon. It is neither factual nor constructive. “The nomination of the

Goldwater - Miller ticket divided the Republican Party so severely that in spite of the efforts of Republican State organisations like New York, the nation rejected the national ticket by unprecedented pluralities. “Mr Nixon’s latest manoeuvre is hardly calculated to advance this effort,” Mr Rockefeller said. Nixon said that a “great battle” is shaping up over leadership of the G.O.P. He urged Republicans to give Goldwater a “cooling-off period” before the fighting starts.