Unabashed Conservative

Congressmen have known it for a long time. Last week the U.S. public learned that the statesman-leader of the Republican Party in domestic affairs is Robert Alphonso Taft. In matters of foreign policy the Republicans take their cues from Senator Arthur Hendrick Vandenberg. But on such household matters as housing, the budget, education, labor, the man is Taft.

It was Taft who led the Senate Republicans around the pitfalls of-last week's labor legislation, brought the G.O.P. out on the other side without mishap and even with honor.

It was Taft who held up the warning hand when the President's emergency labor measure, whipped through a wrathful House, came before a wrathful Senate. He saw the danger to U.S. tradition in the draft-strikers measure. He also foresaw the political repercussions it would set up. He spoke out in leadership against it, pulled 69 Senators (including all but 13 Democrats) with him. Arch-conservative Bob Taft emerged, to the embarrassment of the Administration and to the surprise of labor, as labor's stern protector.

Precise Man. With the same agility and shrewdness he had handled the Case bill, which he insisted on settling before the emergency bill went through the mill. The Case bill was permanent legislation, not designed to punish labor but to keep labor within bounds. Taft had prepared himself to follow that line. He knew exactly what he wanted to do; he was not swayed by emotion. With his colleague Joe Ball he hammered out the bill he wanted--by no means a perfect bill, but a reasonable one which Harry Truman might find it hard to veto.

Altogether it was a bad week for the Democrats, but a great week for the precise-minded son of the nation's gusty 26th President. He had probably not grown in personal popularity among his fellow Republicans, but personal popularity is not the strength of cool, twang-tongued Bob Taft.

He has a fenced-off friendly side. His office in the Senate Office Building reflects his pride: the photographs of his wife and four sons, the bronze statue of his father which stands on the mantel--old William Howard Taft, long coat swept back, right hand in hip pocket. One large photograph of the ex-President, vital and smiling, waving a hat, rests on the floor, against the fireplace. When people try to hang it on the wall, Bob Taft waves his hand and remonstrates: "No, I like it right there."

The source of his strength is his diligence. He gets to his office early, works frequently on holidays, goes home with a brief case full of papers, reads and dictates until late hours. There are few bills on which he is not an authority. No Senator is more respected for having the facts in hand.

Muscle Man. The source of his effectiveness as chairman of the Republican steering committee is his technique of muscling in on a Democratic proposal, blocking its passage and stripping out what he doesn't like (often with the help of Dixie Democrats), and then retooling it to Taft specifications. Thus he has worked himself into the position where, as much as any man in the Senate, he is able to shape legislation.

Examples of Taft-at-work are his measures for federal housing (up to $200,000,000 annually for slum clearance), for federal medical and dental aid (he is dead set against socialized medicine), for federal aid in education. They represent a conservative's compromises--the substitute measures which a nimble and hard-willed legislator has wrung out of his opponents. Educators and housing experts who thought they were going to deal with a reactionary fogy when he consulted them about his bills found themselves agreeing with him on most major points, marveling at his knowledge of the facts.

Senator Taft holds a firm grip on the pre-1948 G.O.P. machine, through control of its organization in the South--which for decades has been in the hands of Ohio Republicans. He stands quietly but determinedly between Brickerites on the not-so-far right of him and Stassenites on the not-so-far left of him. That is a fine position for a smart operator who might want to choose the 1948 presidential candidate--or be the candidate himself.

Last week 56-year-old Bob Taft, seven years a Senator, took a few minutes out from his earnest labors in the Senate to announce that he would not seek the nomination. But he quickly added that he never heard of "anyone running away from it."

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