President Ford and Ronald Reagan are waging a toe-to-toe fight for the party's ultimate prize. At ringside sit such potential contenders as Vice President Rockefeller and former Treasury Secretary John B. Connally, awaiting an unlikely mutual Ford-Reagan knockout that would give them a shot at the Presidential nomination.

But Republicans of varying philosophical hues said in interviews over the last few days that the 1976 nomination might not be worth winning. Some said the party itself might be beyond repair.

Young progresssives spoke dejectedly of the 1976 campaign as their "last hurrah" as Republican activists. Conservative purists described specific contingency plans aimed at "destroying the Republican Party" as a means to create a new major party. And campaign professionals beholden to neither ideological wing said they feared the party might do no more than "stagger along as a cripple" for another day.

Source: Naughton, James M. Some Republicans Fearful Party Is on Its Last Legs. New York Times. May 31, 1976.