Speechmaking Candidate

To wise guys who have been whispering, "Wait and see--Taft will fade out, then throw his support to Bricker," Ohio's Senator Robert Alphonso Taft and Governor John William Bricker had an answer last week. In Washington, they threw their arms around each other. Governor Bricker, once called a dark horse, said he was a horse of another color, would support Taft to the "last ditch." He frowned officially on a Chicago "Bricker-for-President" headquarters. Still some of the wise guys merely winked.

Whether ponderous Bob Taft gets the Republican nomination or not, nobody winks at his energetic seriousness. He takes many a clip on the chin but keeps wading in. Still beaming from the Washington embrace, he showed up in Florida to do his stuff. There he added to the file of Calvinesque Taft pictures by letting himself be photographed fishing--coatless but in a store suit (see cut).

By the time he reached Miami's Bayfront Park, where 4,000 oldsters and youngsters heard him castigate NLRB ("a new one ... on which employers and employes are represented rather than left-wing enthusiasts") ; Trade Treaties ("The Republican Party believes in imposing and retaining a tariff equal to the difference in cost of production abroad . . ."); SEC ("amended to be what it was intended to be, a protection against fraud, and not a weapon [of] the Government"); the Wage-Hour Law ("Nothing [so] threatens to throttle small business today . . ."); Social Security's payroll tax ("particularly oppressive"), Bob Taft was well into his third century of speeches since he was elected to the U. S. Senate 15 months ago.* Even the wise guys allowed there was nothing wrong with Candidate Taft's will to win. Of the 28 States he has visited lately, said Mr. Taft, "two or three" are doubtful. All the rest are Republican.

* In the same period Franklin Roosevelt, most speechifying of Presidents, has delivered 40 public addresses

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