Hughy's Fudocracy

Pennsylvania's Hugh Scott Jr., 52, is a sixth-term Congressman whose 1948-49 stint as Republican National Committee chairman was marked by more noise than victory. Once a Tom Dewey partisan and more recently a member of Eisenhower's personal campaign staff, Scott last week complained that some Republicans in Congress are acting like "quarreling old women," and a few are "old fuds," * blocking the Eisenhower program and thus endangering G.O.P. election prospects. Writing in the American Magazine, Scott named to his "fudocracy": in the Senate, Wisconsin's Joe McCarthy, 43, Nevada's George W. Malone, 63, Idaho's Herman Welker, 46; and in the House, Illinois' Noah Mason, 71, Michigan's Clare Hoffman, 77, and New York's Dan Reed, 78.

More noteworthy than Scott's by-name attack was the mildness of the retorts. Like cows flicking off summer flies, Scott's "old fuds" answered back. Said headline-grabbing Joe McCarthy: "Scott probably wanted to get a headline ... all you have to do is call McCarthy a name and you get your name in print." Hoffman said he had merely "attempted to protect the President from some bad advice that would have led him down the path blazed by New Deal Democrats." Malone advised Scott to "settle down"; Mason said he opposed Eisenhower's program only "where I thought it was wrong." And from his home in Dunkirk. N.Y., old Dan Reed, who lost a slugging match to the President on excess profits taxes in July, said of his relations with Ike, "We are very close friends." Of Scott's grumble, Reed chuckled: "Well. Hughy'll say darn near anything for publicity."

* Webster defines "fud" as: 1) the buttocks; also, tail of a hare, cony, etc.; 2) woolen waste, for mixing with mungo and shoddy.

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