A Place to Stand

After the stunning shock of the election, Republicans were beginning to stir again. Most of them were still trying to figure out what had gone wrong; some were sure they knew.

One who was positive was pugnacious old Clarence Budington Kelland, the slick fictioneer who is also national committeeman from Arizona--a part of the country where dinosaur relics are still found. One day last week, Bud Kelland delivered himself of a blast. Said he: "Dewey's campaign was smug, arrogant, stupid, and supercilious ... It was a contemptuous campaign, contemptuous alike to our antagonists and to our friends. The Albany group proved themselves to be geniuses in the art of stirring up an avalanche of lethargy. No issue was stated or faced." What was needed, said Kelland, was a "housecleaning from top to bottom."

Our Own Way. There was little doubt about the kind of housecleaning Kelland had in mind. In his eyes--and in the eyes of the G.O.P. Old Guard--Tom Dewey and Earl Warren are pseudo-New Dealers and therefore not good Republicans.

Kelland & Co. had some support from the lower echelons. Some 500 Southern California Republicans, meeting at Alhambra, Calif, last week, attacked Warren's "nonpartisanship," and called for the elimination of the state's cross-filing system "so we will be sure candidates who run for public office on the Republican ticket shall subscribe to the principles of real Republicanism." Some other Old Guardsmen kept their sense of humor. Said one: "These boys have wrecked the party in three different national elections. Now it's only fair to give us a chance to wreck it our way."

The Old Guard thought they now had a mandate. Only in 1946, they said, had the issue been clearly drawn against the New Deal, and in 1946 the Republicans had won. Some talked of reviving their congressional coalition with conservative Southern Democrats--a set of obstructionists whom Harry Truman had just thrown overboard as so much excess ballast. Speaker Joe Martin hustled down to Mobile, told the Alabama Chamber of Commerce: "It was the South which helped to hold the line for American enterprise through the trying years of the prewar experiment in Washington."

If the Republican Party should become a party of conservatives, would it ever win another election? Dewey's popular vote was only a shade larger than Herbert Hoover's, despite the fact that a whole generation of voters had grown up since 1928. But in the opinion of Ohio's Bob Taft (who was vacationing in Rome), the Republicans had only to hang on. Said Taft: "[The party] should present a constructive program . . . opposing every unnecessary addition to the totalitarian powers of the federal government. The fallacies and dangers of the Administration's economic and control policies will become entirely apparent to the people within a few years."

Republicans v. the People. But even more decisively than they rejected Dewey, the voters had rejected the 80th Congress. Writing in the New York Herald Tribune, Russell Davenport, onetime FORTUNE editor and Willkie's 1940 campaign coordinator, declared recently: "The [Republican] party has failed to inspire the American people with confidence . . . Its failure is a failure of leadership at all levels ... But, with the sole exception of the Willkie struggle, the theme for the last 16 years has been the 'Republican Party v. the People.' And the people have won." Vermont's Senator George Aiken demanded that progressive Republicans "throw out the Old Guard leadership."

There was little immediate prospect of that. The House's Martin-Halleck-Taber leadership was too firmly entrenched. Liberal G.O.P. Senators would find it hard to agree upon an alternate to Ohio's Bob Taft, himself far more liberal than the House's ruling clique.

But on the policy level, the skirmishing was brisk. Young Philip Willkie, elected to the Indiana legislature, suggested a national convention in 1949 to formulate a new program. Said New Hampshire's Senator Charles Tobey: "Instead of being forever against everything, the party must once in a while be in favor of the plain interests of the people."

Full Dinner Pail. It had been, in the past. It was founded as a crusading party, champions of free farmers and free labor against slaveholders and slavery. Until 1908, labor had been traditionally Republican. The A.F.L.'s Samuel Gompers was a frequent visitor to the White House when McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt occupied it. The McKinley program of prosperity and "the full dinner pail" appealed to farmers and workers as well as employers.

In 1946, the Republicans had captured the independent vote--and then promptly lost it. To Connecticut's Senator Raymond Baldwin, the reasons for the loss were clear as early as 1947. The independent voters, he pointed out then, had wanted mild labor legislation, housing, something done about high prices, protection through rent controls. The 80th Congress gave them the Taft-Hartley law, no housing, no action on prices, and raised rents.

Storm Signals. Everywhere, the cry was for more "young blood" and "progressive leadership." But most Republicans, like National G.O.P. Chairman Hugh Scott Jr., had only half-learned the lesson of 1948. Diagnosing the election, Scott declared: "The public has accepted the intervention of government in its daily life . . . Ours is a spiritual job of moving the minds of people--not just a mechanical job of moving people to the polls." Then, in the next breath, he added: "In the days to come, we've got to run up the storm signals . . . We have got to convince the people that we were right in warning against regimentation and state socialism."

But what Scott called "regimentation" and "state socialism" was what the people had voted for in 1948. The words did not impress anybody any more--if they ever did--and it behooved the Republicans to realize it as simple political fact.

The Dilemma. But the fact posed a real dilemma. Obviously, it was not enough to advocate a return to yesterday. Obviously, the party's policy must be made more progressive. But just where could progressive Republicans find a place to stand without becoming "me-too" Democrats?

It was easier to state the problem than to find the answers. Somehow, the Republicans would have to find, fashion, and raise a standard to which the people could & would repair. Said Massachusetts' Senator Henry Cabot Lodge: "The American people, in effect, said to the Republicans: You have made some real progress in liberalizing yourselves and in making yourselves a forward-looking instrument of the popular will--but you have not progressed far enough. We are still afraid that you may backslide. Go out and try again."

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