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The Republicans will focus on persuading such traditional Democrats as Catholic "ethnics" that McGovern represents radicalism and permissiveness. "He bought the whole package of the President's commission on population growth, including contraceptives for teen-agers," says a White House aide. "That'll go over great in the Catholic community." Already the Republican rhetoric on McGovern is being honed to a nasty edge. Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott was moved to call McGovern the "triple-A candidate—acid, amnesty and abortion." While Nixon would campaign as a working President, he would have scores of "surrogate candidates" ready to go forth with grittier political messages. One of them might be Spiro Agnew or, if Agnew is dropped from the Republican ticket, former Treasury Secretary John Connally. Last week, perhaps in preparation for a vice-presidential role, Connally was dispatched by the President on a 17-nation world tour in Nixon's behalf.
Wan. Was there any way that McGovern might be stopped short of a first-ballot nomination? Both Muskie and Humphrey seem to hold on to some wan hope. Muskie, after a night of soul-searching and consultation with his advisers, decided against throwing his strength to McGovern and guaranteeing his first-ballot nomination. Said Muskie: "If reform of the Democratic Party means anything, it means that the nominee of the party must be selected in an open convention."
Humphrey made gingerly motions to the right last week. Contrary to an earlier statement, he said that he might be willing to accept George Wallace as a vice-presidential running mate. Such a combination would be highly improbable—whether for ideological reasons or because Wallace might simply be too debilitated by his gunshot wounds to campaign. But Humphrey clearly hoped to gain Wallace's 328 delegates in exchange for allowing the Alabamian some added influence at the convention.
But the only way McGovern might now be denied the nomination, many Democrats felt, was for him to adopt such intransigent positions before the credentials and platform committees that his momentum would abruptly halt, and the uncommitted delegates would harden against him. According to this scenario, he would so antagonize party regulars that his delegates would freeze at 1,300, denying him a first-ballot victory. Then a hemorrhage might begin, with his delegates leaking away to Muskie or Humphrey or a dark horse. But to deny the nomination to a man who had accumulated 1,300 or more delegates through the primaries would likely provoke a disastrous party schism.
Already McGovern seems moving toward the center, fuzzing if not softening his positions. On the eve of the California primary, McGovern went to the Democratic Governors conference in Houston, where he found the initial mood chilly and depressed. When 30 Governors at that meeting were asked whether McGovern could carry their states, only three raised their hands —Wisconsin's Pat Lucey, South Dakota's Richard Kneip and Minnesota's Wendell Anderson. McGovern listened to a barrage of complaints about the cascading number of delegate challenges being made by his supporters. "My God," said Nebraska's Jim Exon, "I endorsed you, and the McGovern people are trying to keep me off the delegation!"