THE ELECTION: A POST-MORTEM

THE BALTIMORE SUN: FOR the better part of two years, this has been a dispirited Administration. Tuesday's results, we believe, were primarily the reflection of that and of the consequent public uneasiness.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: THE responsibility for this disaster, when you come right down to it, must rest on President Eisenhower. It was he who had the sense of direction and lost it; it was he who should have nurtured a party to support his ideas and did not.

THE DENVER POST: OUR view is that millions of people were shaken by Republican doubletalk over the budget two years ago, the U.S. lag in missiles and the race for outer space, the incredible confusion over civil defense, the Sherman Adams case, Little Rock, and the antics of John Foster Dulles. It all adds up to weak, distracted and irrationalized leadership.

THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE : HAVING done its best to alienate its only possible supporters, the Republican party ought not to have been surprised when it found itself without friends.

Columnist ROSCOE DRUMMOND: THE overriding political fact is that the Republican Right wing was decimated. Wherever the Republicans lost, it was almost uniformly the extreme Republican conservatives who fell by the wayside. Wherever the Republicans won, it was almost invariably the Republican liberals--the Eisenhower Republicans, the "modern" Republicans--who withstood and in New York turned back the Democratic avalanche.

Columnist DAVID LAWRENCE: AS sure as day follows night, if the if, Republican party advertises its nominee as a "modern Republican" next time, it will increase the stay-at-home Republican vote, and surely elect the Democratic Presidential nominee.

Columnist JOSEPH ALSOP : IT is perfect nonsense, in fact, to talk of these 1958 results in terms of a gigantic, irresistible tidal wave. What looked like a tidal wave was first of all the sum of a long series of local Republican choices of candidates obviously likely to repel the maximum number of votes. Wherever the Democrats committed comparable follies, as they did here and there, they also suffered.

THE LOS ANGELES MIRROR-NEWS: ONCE again the G.O.P. was portrayed as the party of the rich, the selfish and of "big business." And once again the Democratic party appeared as that of the little fellow, the workingman and of "the middle class." A reconstructed Republican party has a priceless opportunity today. For between the nether wings of both major parties, there exists a tremendous vacuum, aching to be filled.

THE NEW YORK TIMES: THE right-wing "Old Guard" of the Republican party has, it is good to say, now dwindled almost to nothingness.

THE DALLAS NEWS: TIME is short. The forces of conservatism in Washington are dwindling [to] men like Harry Byrd, [Barry] Goldwater. When they are gone, we all are gone.

THE RICHMOND NEWS LEADER: IN this debacle there were many losers, not the candidates alone, but the G.O.P. as a whole, Vice President Nixon as an individual and (let us face the grim truth) the South as a region.

THE WASHINGTON POST AND TIMES HERALD : IT is too bad that the Democratic Party could not have had the same sort of purge of its more extreme troglodytic elements that the voters administered to the Republicans.

THE ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH: WE would guess that the greatest discontent of 1958 focuses on the conduct of foreign policy by John Foster Dulles.

THE DES MOINES TRIBUNE: THE voters have expressed a strong vote of no confidence in the Eisenhower Administration and in the Republican party--the Republican old guard suffered a drastic defeat.

THE MILWAUKEE JOURNAL: EISENHOWER, elected as the great leader, has failed to lead.

THE MIAMI HERALD: THE results yesterday rebuke, if they do not repudiate, the Eisenhower Administration. It has not balanced the budget or materially reduced expenditures. It has let a wishy-washy foreign policy lap to the shores of foreign war.

THE WASHINGTON EVENING STAR: THE future of this country belongs not to the traditional conservatives, but to those who travel down the center, or even a bit to the left of center of the political road.

THE ATLANTA CONSTITUTION: THE G.O.P. Administration, despite integrity and the good will of the President, has provided little vision or leadership. It has been indecisive, uncertain and hesitant. The people had lost confidence in it.

THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL: DISSATISFACTION with the quality of the Eisenhower leadership unquestionably was at the root of the results.

THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR: THE advent of "Modern Republicanism" has turned the G.O.P. into a mugwump party without any powerful or appealing national character. By its copy-cat tactics of merely adopting and adapting Democratic principles and programs, it has offered the voters no real opportunity for the kind of change that was promised them in 1952.

The Kremlin's NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV : THE American voters have shown they desire peace. They have condemned the Dulles policy of positions of strength, which is supported by Mr. Eisenhower. We hope the Democrats will change the foreign policy of the U.S. away from the brink of war. They should construct their policy with due regard for the existence of the Socialist camp. We want peaceful coexistence.

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