(9 of 11)
During the G.O.P. meeting, Goldwater was called away to accept a telephone call from Haig. How many Senators would stand by the President? Haig wondered. No more than twelve or 15, Goldwater estimated. Returning to the meeting, the former presidential candidate was even more pessimistic. He said he doubted that Nixon could get more than nine votes, and if pressed, he could only name offhand two certainties: Curtis and South Carolina's Strom Thurmond. It became obvious at the meeting that Nixon had hopelessly lost the Republican leaders he needed for survival, including Goldwater and Tower. General agreement was reached that Nixon should be informed of his grave predicament in the Senate and that a majority of the Senators at the luncheon thought that the President must resign. But no decision was made on who should do it or just how it should be done.
That came in a smaller meeting later in the day of the official Republican Senate leadership&$151;Scott, Tower and Griffin—and two invited Senators representing opposite wings of the party: Goldwater and New York's Liberal Jacob Javits. The group selected Goldwater as the man who ought to seek a meeting with the President to warn him of the tremendous odds against his acquittal. Said Scott: "We agreed that Barry should be our emissary to the President." It was a role long ago foreseen for Goldwater in any ultimate resignation scenario.
A flurry of phone calls between Scott, Goldwater and three White House aides, Haig, Dean Burch and William Timmons, quickly followed. Goldwater's intention was unmistakably clear to Nixon's men: he wanted to let the President know that his Senate support had collapsed and that many Republican Senators favored his immediate resignation. The aides carried the grim news to Nixon. Finally aware of the depth of his troubles, Nixon deferred such a meeting, but his last option, resignation, loomed larger.
Repeatedly throughout the afternoon, Timmons was asked by the President for soundings on the sentiment in the Senate. Each time, Timmons' telephoned report was distressing. At most, Timmons could count only 20 of the vital 34 votes Nixon would need to survive, and even that insufficient band kept dwindling.
Nixon was now under a continuous barrage of public declarations by other influential members of Congress. Rhodes, long a Nixon loyalist, described the new tapes as "a cataclysmic affair" and declared that "coverup of criminal activity and misuse of federal agencies can neither be condoned nor tolerated." "Was there anything Nixon could do to salvage his situation?" a reporter asked Rhodes. He replied: "I suppose there might be, but I couldn't tell you what it is."
Even the Judiciary Committee's Edward Hutchinson made his turnabout official. "I feel that I have been deceived," he said, declaring that he would vote for impeachment "with a heavy heart." Arriving in Washington from Mississippi, Lott also confirmed his reversal on impeachment. He had reacted to the new evidence, he said,