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One Republican whose cooperation will be crucial for a truly effective attack on the President is having none of it—at least for the time being. He is Senate Minority Leader Everett M. Dirksen, who, significantly, is scheduled to head the Republican Platform Committee at the 1968 presidential convention in Miami, and thus may have a good deal to say about the party's Viet Nam policy, before and during the campaign. Shrugging off the efforts of House Republican leaders to dissociate themselves from the President's Viet Nam policy, Dirksen declared gruffly: "They offer no alternative. Do we quit? Do we stop the bombing? There has to be an alternative. You don't declare a holiday in war unless both sides are willing to go to the table. There have been no indications that the other side will talk."
On the other hand, by breaking with the President without offering a closely reasoned alternative, said Dirksen, "you only strengthen Ho Chi Minh's determination to hang on. That's been the trouble right along."
In similar vein, Richard Nixon told an interviewer that it would be disastrous for a Republican presidential nominee to run on a "peace-at-any-price" platform in 1968. "This would be a Pyrrhic victory the candidate might win," said Nixon, "but the Republican President would soon have another war on his hands." Nixon took note of the growing peace sentiment within the U.S. but added that the task for a presidential contender is not to pander to this sentiment but to exert forceful leadership.