‘Watergate will be forgotten’

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33407, 13 December 1973, Page 17

‘Watergate will be forgotten’

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) WASHINGTON, December 12. Meat, potatoes, and foreign affairs will be the key topics in Congressional elections next year and the Watergate scandal will have been forgotten, according to predictions by Republican leaders.

The assessment of Republican plans and prospects for 1974 was outlined after yesterday’s strategy meeting in the White House with President Nixon, Vice-President Gerald Ford, top party campaign co-ordinators in Congress, and Mr George Bush, the Republicans’ national chairman. The Republican leaders hope to make some gains in the House of Representatives, where all 435 seats are up for election, and in the Senate, where one-third of the 100 seats will be contested. Mr Bush told reporters that the leaders agreed that too much attention was being devoted to the Watergate affair. The President’s intention to make a full disclosure of everything he knows, would put Watergate behind him—and anyway voters would be more concerned with wages, inflation, the price of food ‘and peace abroad, he added. “We’re not as gloomy as (some people think we ought ;to be,” Mr Bush said. He was referring to some dissident Republicans who believe that their only chance iof survival in the Congressional elections next autumn would be Mr Nixon’s resignaItion or impeachment. Only in that way, they (argue, can the party be com'pletely dissociated from last (year’s burglary and bugging of the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate building by members of Mr Nixon’s re-election campaign staff. Meanwhile, a Congressman, Mr Peter Rodino (Democrat, New Jersey) the chairman of jthe House Judiciary Committee, which is considering impeachment of Mr Nixon, suggested that he might move Ito create a smaller sub-com-'mittee to speed up the probe. In addition, he said, an advisory committee would be named of legal experts and academics to guide the committee over the largelyuncharted ground of preparing for a Presidential impeachment.

The move by Mr Rodino to appoint a smaller committee was backed by a Republican Congressman, Mr Rom Railsback, of Illinois. Mr Rodino was also searching for a special lawyer to head the investigation. He was said to be seeking a Republican, to ward off charges that the probe was a Democratic attempt to unseat a Republican President