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This week in Chicago, the tiny right-wing American Independent Party will hold its own convention to nominate its choices for President and Vice President. The candidates include former Georgia Governor Lester Maddox and Conservative Digest Publisher Richard Viguerie. "It is now time for conservatives to file for divorce," says Viguerie. "Who needs the kind of victory where both parties support socialism—the Democrats by design and the Republicans by default?" The A.I.P. effort will not amount to very much. But it symbolizes the disgust of some Republicans with even the Ford-Dole ticket, which is almost as far to the right as two-party tolerances will bear these days.
Ford may benefit from another splinter movement—the independent candidacy of Eugene McCarthy, whose name on the ballots of 16 states so far (he aims for at least 45 by Election Day) may drain off enough votes from Jimmy Carter to make a decisive difference. Some of Ford's campaign advisers have discussed the possibility of inducing wealthy Republicans to give money to McCarthy's campaign and thus encourage McCarthy's spoiler role. Since Ford intends to finance his campaign with $25 million in federal election funds and can raise no more under the law, some Republican contributors may spend their money elsewhere, indirectly to assist the Ford-Dole ticket.
Now Ford and his advisers plan to move quickly to shake and upgrade the often lax leadership of the President's campaign and to get some of Reagan's sharpest aides on board. For many weeks, Ford's headhunters have been discreetly inquiring about the abilities of various Reagan workers, and there have been quiet contacts between the two staffs.
At local levels in many states, where wounds from the primaries are still hurting, the switch of loyalties will be difficult—but necessary for Republican success. Reagan's Washington state chairman, Warren McPherson, warns that "west of the Rockies, Ford is going to lose every state if he doesn't set up new structures that incorporate the Reagan organizations in their entirety and on the basis of parity."
In the weeks ahead, Ford will try to persuade tens of millions of people that he is a safer choice than Carter. Hammering again and again at last week's themes of peace, prosperity and personal trust, he will take credit for the restoration of integrity at one end of Pennsylvania Avenue and condemn the follies at the other end. But to prevail in November, the man who heads the minority party will have to win the votes of farmers who are angered by his Administration's grain embargoes, of blue-collar workers who are sore about unemployment and of a lot of big-city dwellers who feel that Ford has not done well enough by them. If Ford can do that, then the most engrossing convention since 1952 may be followed by the biggest political upset since one of Ford's fighting heroes, Harry Truman, turned the trick in 1948.