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A Battler's Prize. Now his big job is to prove to the nation that he is the worthiest man. It will be a rugged, uphill run, for he has little organization, no seasoned national campaign staff, not even the facilities to handle the hordes of reporters who will be chasing after him. Yet he is determined. "I'm going to go every place that will have me," he said, "and tell them why I think we should have progressive Republicanism and why I want to be the candidate."
No matter what the outcome, Scranton's entrance into the race has positive value, for it has made it plain that the G.O.P presidential nomination is worth fighting for, that it is a battler's prize, not a cheap, pallid present. If Scranton's campaign builds any momentum at all —and does not wound too deeply—he would, at the very least, become Goldwater's strongest possibility for Vice President.
At week's end Scranton was at the Connecticut Republican convention, again attacking Goldwaterism. "Because of havoc that has been spread across the national landscape," he declared, "the Republican Party wonders how it will make clear to the American people that it does not oppose social security, the United Nations, human rights and a sane nuclear policy." In such appearances lay his only possible strategy—that of making himself as visible as possible in as many places as possible, and in so doing displaying the energy, the mind and the articulate tongue that will convince American voters that he would make a good President.
It would be an exercise in futility for Scranton to start counting delegates; he can, for the time being, leave that to Barry, who now claims some 737. But the vast majority of these delegates are obligated neither by law nor conscience to cast their votes for Goldwater in the ultimate showdown. If Scranton, in the time remaining to him, can corral a consensus in his favor throughout the whole wide ranks of the Republican Party, he can almost surely swing a great many delegates away from Goldwater. If he does, and if he wins the nomination, he will have proved himself a strong and attractive enough candidate to give even Lyndon Johnson a real run for the money.