Mar. 11, 1964 - Richard M. Nixon declared in Newark, N.J., tonight that there was no man in this country who could conduct a more effective campaign against President Johnson than he.
Nixon spoke at the Military Park Hotel, where he was guest of honor tonight at a Republican dinner. A group of Goldwater sympathizers picketed outside.
The former Vice President served notice to the Democrats that, if nominated, he would reverse his 1960 strategy of seeking Democratic votes in the South.
Nixon said: “The South is pretty firmly in Johnson’s control.” He said that Republican strategy in 1964 should aim at the Northern industrial states rather than at the South, as in 1960. But Nixon said he still had no intention of becoming an active candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination before the convention.
At the dinner, Nixon delivered an indictment of President Johnson. “Unless he breaks silence on the Bobby Baker case and unless he disassociates himself from this kind of hanky-panky, I warn you that we could be in for four more years of wheeling and dealing and influence-peddling unprecedented in this country.”
Nixon went on to attack the President’s foreign policy which, he said, was allowing the free world to fall into the hands of the Communists.
Nixon, who sat up until 1 a.m. this morning watching the results of the New Hampshire primary on television, saw Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge’s write-in victory as spectacular. But he said it would be a mistake “to count Goldwater and Rockefeller out of the race.”
“They are still very much in it,” he said, “and there will be no write-ins in the California primary.” Nixon sees the California contest as a “sudden death playoff” for Goldwater and Rockefeller.
Expressing pleasure at his own showing in yesterday’s primary, Nixon said: “It was done without help.” Lodge, Ambassador to South Vietnam, profited from a brilliant public-relations campaign in the state and a great deal of active support, Nixon said.
As for his pre-convention role, Nixon said he would, as “titular leader of the party, bring the case home against President Johnson.” But in no instance, he emphasized, would he become an active candidate.
At the same time, Nixon said: “I feel there is no man in this country who can make a case against Johnson more effectively than I can.”
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