Unless the political seers and opinion polls are totally mistaken the impending by-elections may be the most important in recent memory. For the issue to be decided is not control of Congress—already resolved in favor of the Democrats—or the matter of individual-gains and losses—important as these may be to the people who are running. The burning question of 1974 is of considerably greater magnitude than either of these absorbing topics. It is nothing less than the survival of the Republican Party. All the indicia at this point suggest the GOP is facing an electoral calamity which could rival the disaster that struck the Party in 1958. That projection could be wrong, of course, and many observers including this one devoutly hope so. A wipeout of such proportions would mean a loss of more than fifty seats in the House of Representatives and six to eight in the U.S. Senate, spell defeat for numerous conservative officeholders, and give us a 94th Congress committed to reckless spending, augmented regulation of the economy, and further irrationality in the conduct of our defense and foreign policies. It could also spell the end of the Republican Party as a major force in America.
The factors pointing in this direction are too well known, perhaps, to require elaborate summary. The malaise of Watergate has poisoned Republican opportunities across the nation, and matters do not appear to have changed perceptibly with the substitution of Ford for Nixon. The honeymoon with the new President has been remarkably short-lived, destroyed by a succession of political blunders —amnesty for draft evaders, the Rockefeller nomination, the Nixon pardon, the proposed increase in taxes.
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