■ Phil Crane pulled the plug and suddenly everyone’s getting into the presidential swing. . . . Rep. John Anderson (Ill.), chairman of the House Republican Conference, says he’ll get in come the new year. Anderson, a moderate Republican, is the bête noire of the New Right, which tried to upset him in this spring’s primary by running fundamentalist Don Lyon against him. . . . Evans & Novak say Jack Kemp (N.Y.) is setting up a Political Action Committee (PAC) to raise money to publicize his tax-cutting reform legislation, and incidentally to use as a vehicle to launch his presidential drive. . . . That makes three virtually certain candidates on the Right: Reagan, Crane, and Kemp, plus, possibly, Connally, Dole, Laxalt. . . . David Broder of the Washington Post says George Bush, a centrist, has been busy in recent weeks signing up most of the key Gerald Ford people in New Hampshire, including Rep. James Cleveland and N.H. National Committeemen Robert Bass Jr. and Victoria Zachos. . . . Now comes Gov. Meldrim Thomson suggesting that he could play a favorite-son role in that primary. . . . Sen. Jacob Javits (presumably relieved that Jack Kemp may not, after all, go after his Senate seat in ’80) discounts either a Reagan or a Ford candidacy, but says the party is well endowed with strong presidential timber like, well, liberal Illinois Gov. James Thompson, liberal Michigan Gov. William Milliken, and liberal Illinois Sen. Charles Percy. . . . No one, but no one seems to be including Connecticut’s liberal Sen. Lowell Weicker on any list, although he has made his availability known.
■ Labor likes and dislikes (mostly the latter). . . . Dislikes Jack Kemp, who was called by AFL-CIO chief lobbyist Al Barkan “a double-plated, triple- coated, four-faced, five-plied phony.” . . . Dislikes Jimmy Carter. Says one union president (attending an AFL- CIO Executive Council): “Labor leaders are ready to take him [Carter] on. They’ll either support his opposition in the primaries or sit them out. [But] if Kennedy runs, they’ll all be for him.” . . . Dislikes U.S. District Court Judge Barrington D. Parker, who ruled that the National Right to Work Committee need not give the Federal Election Commission the names of people who have contributed to it. The Committee feared union members might be harassed. . . . But likes Chuck Percy. For the first time ever the Illinois AFL- CIO will support a Republican in a statewide race.
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