For the Record

Jimmy Carter thinks Ronald Reagan will be the GOP nominee next year, and so does Speaker Tip O’Neill. . . . Lou Harris calls Reagan “the clear front-runner for the Republican nomination”; his polls show Reagan leading Howard Baker 64 to 35 and John Connally 71 to 26 (among Republican voters). . . . Most of the party pros (state chairmen and national committeemen polled by the Christian Science Monitor) think so too. Of the 99 who replied, 39 thought Reagan would get the nomination, 24 thought it would go to Connally, 10 to Bush, and eight to Baker. . . . But when asked who they would prefer to see nominated, George Bush came out on top: 27 votes for Bush, to 24 for Reagan, 22 for Connally, eight for Baker, two each for John Anderson, Philip Crane, and Bob Dole. . . . One rumor that refuses to go away: that Reagan and Bush have made a deal for Bush to get the Number Two spot on the ticket. . . . Reagan, incidentally, in a letter to Rep. Henry Hyde, has come out unequivocally against abortion except when the mother’s own life is in danger. . . . Whoever gets the nod will also get the vote of a brand-new American citizen, Lana Peters, formerly Svetlana Stalin. Mrs. Peters registered Republican because, she says, “I could never vote for a liberal.” (Just like the old man.)

On the Democratic side, the antiCarter tide continues to rise. George McGovern says Ted Kennedy should be the party’s 1980 nominee because of Carter’s “moral posturing, public manipulations, and political ineptitude.” . . . Sen. Henry Jackson also sees a Kennedy nomination. . . . Sen. Lowell Weicker, the Republican maverick, suggests that Carter take himself out of the race and complains that we have “no way of removing a President who lacks the capacity for the job, unless he’s at a point where he has to be chased down with a net.” . . . On the other hand, the leaders of six major AFL-CIO unions, with a membership of three million among them, rallied to Carter last week—slightly lukewarmly, to be sure.

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Presidential Election

Jimmy Carter thinks Ronald Reagan will be the GOP nominee next year, and so does Speaker Tip O’Neill. . . . Lou Harris calls Reagan “the clear front-runner for the Republican nomination”; his polls show Reagan leading Howard Baker 64 to 35 and John Connally 71 to 26 (among Republican voters). . . . Most of the party pros (state chairmen and national committeemen polled by the Christian Science Monitor) think so too. Of the 99 who replied, 39 thought Reagan would get the nomination, 24 thought it would go to Connally, 10 to Bush, and eight to Baker. . . . But when asked who they would prefer to see nominated, George Bush came out on top: 27 votes for Bush, to 24 for Reagan, 22 for Connally, eight for Baker, two each for John Anderson, Philip Crane, and Bob Dole. . . . One rumor that refuses to go away: that Reagan and Bush have made a deal for Bush to get the Number Two spot on the ticket. . . . Reagan, incidentally, in a letter to Rep. Henry Hyde, has come out unequivocally against abortion except when the mother’s own life is in danger. . . . Whoever gets the nod will also get the vote of a brand-new American citizen, Lana Peters, formerly Svetlana Stalin. Mrs. Peters registered Republican because, she says, “I could never vote for a liberal.” (Just like the old man.)

On the Democratic side, the antiCarter tide continues to rise. George McGovern says Ted Kennedy should be the party’s 1980 nominee because of Carter’s “moral posturing, public manipulations, and political ineptitude.” . . . Sen. Henry Jackson also sees a Kennedy nomination. . . . Sen. Lowell Weicker, the Republican maverick, suggests that Carter take himself out of the race and complains that we have “no way of removing a President who lacks the capacity for the job, unless he’s at a point where he has to be chased down with a net.” . . . On the other hand, the leaders of six major AFL-CIO unions, with a membership of three million among them, rallied to Carter last week—slightly lukewarmly, to be sure.