Nation: The Republican Assault on the Senate

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their hands high for TV and newspaper cameras and insisted that they must be elected to help him achieve "a generation of peace" and rid the nation of violence. He talked of the anticrime bill he had signed earlier in the week, designed to help federal authorities attack racketeers and political terrorists. He turned defensive only on the economy, the issue on which his Administration is most vulnerable. (SEE BUSINESS).

Although the weather for Nixon's forays turned unexpectedly frigid, his welcomes were warm. The inevitable hecklers sometimes attempted to disrupt the proceedings. A group in Burlington, Vt., chanted "Stop the war," while someone hurled a few rocks at him, one narrowly missing his head. As elsewhere, Nixon praised the G.O.P. senatorial candidate—Winston Prouty in this case—as a man who had supported him on all the major issues. "A shift of one Senator, sometimes two, will determine whether the President's program goes through," he said. "Give us that majority of one."

The Nixon drive is bold and risky, since he is putting his prestige on the line in states where Republicans seem likely to lose, as well as in states where his presence could make his man a winner. He is plunging into Wisconsin where Democratic Senator William Proxmire seems certain of reelection, and into Minnesota, where his old foe Hubert Humphrey is running far ahead of Congressman Clark MacGregor.

Looking Toward 1972

Along the way Nixon is aiding gubernatorial and congressional candidates in a bid to strengthen his party at its grass roots. It is a tactic that has paid off handsomely for him before. As a private citizen in 1966, he visited 35 states to support 86 G.O.P. candidates—and the party remembered that at its 1968 convention, as it will again in 1972.

Nixon undoubtedly also had 1972 in mind last week when he vetoed a bill that would have lifted equal-time provisions for TV networks, making de bates among presidential candidates more likely, and would have limited campaign expenditures for TV and radio. The G.O.P. has more money to spend on such advertising, and the National Committee for an Effective Congress called the veto a "flagrant example of partisan interests." Yet most of the crowds that Nixon addressed seemed pleased by his partisanship.

For the first month of the Republican campaign, Agnew led the way, swinging a verbal mace with a ferocity that has not been seen in off-year elections since 1954 when Nixon came out swinging low for Eisenhower. Now, as then, some wondered if the Vice President was perhaps exceeding his mandate. Agnew had a few words to say about that last week: "Now let me just make one thing clear. As the Vice President in the Nixon Administration, I'm not on a frolic. I'm out here doing a job for the Administration, and while everything I say does not receive the express clearance of the President, I have a sense of purpose and definition in what I'm attempting to accomplish."

Early on, Agnew gave his own definition of the contest: "One issue dominates this election: Will the radical-liberalism that controls the Senate of the United States prevail in the nation? Or will America be led into the future by the moderates, centrists and conservatives who stand behind the President of the United States?"