Battles of the East

Robert Taft limped out of the New Jersey primary last week, still without a firm toehold on either coast. It was 388,907 for Eisenhower to 228,664 for Taft, with Harold Stassen as usual panting far behind (23,801 votes). Republican leaders counted 36 of the state's 38 delegates for Ike, only two for Taft. Eisenhower carried 20 of the state's 21 counties, losing only Hudson County (Jersey City) to the Ohio Senator.

Taft supporters tried hard to claim a moral victory for their absent candidate. Said John D. M. Hamilton, Taft's eastern campaign manager: "For a candidate who was supposed to have political appeal, General Eisenhower has made a very sorry showing in New Jersey." But Governor Alfred Driscoll, elected as an Eisenhower delegate after a fierce anti-Driscoll campaign by the Taft forces, snapped out a sharp retort: "A loss by 150,000, in a comparatively small vote in an election conducted in horrible, weather, is certainly not a moral victory. It is a defeat. Mr. Hamilton is still using the same expressions that he used when his candidate, Landon, won two states out of 48 in 1936."

Ike's supporters could now point to significant demonstrations of popularity in a New England state (New Hampshire), a Midwest agricultural state (Minnesota) and a big eastern industrial state. Taft's show of strength was still confined to the midlands and the South.

Next: Massachusetts. While the backers argued the postmortems, Candidate Taft bustled on to Massachusetts, where Republicans will elect 38 delegates next week and write in their preferences for President. As Taft relaxed in the pleasant spring sunshine, the Bay State got the full Taft treatment.

At Worcester, Virginia Mistark, a 14-year-old high-school student, waited for more than half an hour to give Taft a yellow daffodil. He smiled and stuck the flower into his lapel. When Virginia remarked that she might be late for class, he took her notebook and penned a note to her teacher: "Please excuse Virginia Mistark for being late. I delayed her. Robert A. Taft."

In Cambridge, Taft appeared at the Patriots' Day exercise, smiled indulgently as a rider in a wig and tricornered hat arrived on his way to warn Lexington the British were coming. He kept right on smiling as a band of anti-Taft Harvard students hoisted placards proclaiming a Taft cabinet: Joe McCarthy for Attorney General, Chiang Kai-shek as Secretary of State, General MacArthur as Secretary of Defense, Fred Hartley (of Taft-Hartley) as Secretary of Labor, and Ohio's Senator John Bricker as Secretary of Commerce.

The Target: Truman. Covering 350 miles in three days, Bob Taft found the crowds large and enthusiastic, and he warmed, glowing, to his work. Said Basil

Brewer, Taft's chairman in Massachusetts: "He was so pleased with the applause that he lapsed into eloquence. You know, he doesn't have any use for rhetoric, but he was carried away in spite of himself."

The main Taft target was still Harry Truman. When he was handed a press bulletin about Truman's threat to keep Congress in session until it approves the defense budget, Taft snapped: "That only carries out the fact that he seems to have gone completely off his head. Like Charles I of England, apparently he claims he has the right to get any money he asks for. Congress has a definite answer to that. They don't have to come back. They can stay home." When a reporter commented that Truman must be his secret ally, Taft chuckled: "Well, every time he opens his mouth he seems to provide me with material."

"But We Like Ike." At several stops along the Taft route, a plane flew overhead towing a crimson banner which said: "Welcome, Senator, but We Like Ike." The Eisenhower state headquarters insisted this was the work of an individual Ike fan, not an organization maneuver. But by this week the Eisenhower forces were beginning their maneuvers in earnest. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Ike's national campaign manager, was coming home for some speeches. Others on the speaking schedule: Representative Christian Herter, an Eisenhower candidate for delegate; Ike strategist Paul Hoffman; Minnesota's Representative Walter Judd.

Pundits making their way through Massachusetts last week were cautious about predictions. But they thought that Ike would win both the write-in preference and a majority of the delegates, thus keeping landlocked Bob Taft still blocked off from the fertile coast.

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