Frustrated Loyalists

The headlines kept telling of Eisenhower Republicans in the U.S. Senate in full-feathered revolt against their Old Guard, anti-Eisenhower leadership. Yet headlines also kept telling of Old Guard, anti-Eisenhower Senate Republicans emerging from Dwight Eisenhower's office to use the White House steps as a we-got-'em-beat platform. It all seemed confusing--until, that is, the behind-the-scenes facts became known. Then it was no longer confusing; it was as plain as day.

Last session, when California's Republican Senator William Knowland announced his retirement as the Senate's G.O.P. leader to run for Governor of California, the handful of Eisenhower Republicans started talking about a real chance to take over. By last August the insurgent planning revolved around Vermont's George Aiken, New Jersey's Clifford Case and New York's Jacob Javits. After such Old Guard Republicans as Nevada's George Malone, Ohio's John Bricker--and Bill Knowland himself--got soundly whipped in the November elections, Aiken & Co. felt sure that they were on the right track. At first they had demanded only that one of their number be named assistant minority leader; by last week they were insisting that they get both the minority leader and the assistant minority leader posts.

Yet even as the Eisenhower Republicans sought a firmer stance, they could feel the rug being pulled out from under them by their political leader. Dwight Eisenhower, after years of insisting that the internal affairs of the Congress were none of his business, had suddenly decided to take a hand. On the record, Ike was merely pleading with Senate Republicans not to get into a ruinous fight. Actually, he was doing everything possible to defeat the Republican Senators who were battling on his behalf.

The President's belief was that with only 34 Republicans in the Senate of the 86th Congress, he should seek unity at all costs--and he thought that kind of unity could be best achieved under the Old Guard leadership, even though it has steadfastly opposed him. So the White House staff went into action. Items:

P: Richard Nixon, whose support the insurgents had originally counted upon, went to a couple of White House conferences and suddenly became noncommittal.

P: Kentucky's middle-roading Senator Thruston Morton, who had been an Eisenhower State Department appointee and remains thoroughly responsive to the President's wishes, announced that he would vote for the Old Guard candidate for Senate leader, Illinois Everett Dirksen. Exception: he would support his Kentucky colleague, John Sherman Cooper, sponsored by Connecticut's Prescott Bush, for Republican leader if Cooper got into the running. But later Cooper withdrew.

P: The Old Guard's longtime leader. New Hampshire's Styles Bridges, got an afternoon appointment with President Eisenhower, returned secretly for breakfast a couple of mornings later, and from the White House steps declared: "I think we are willing to give them a damned fair proposition. I don't think they can rightly ask for more than that." Bridges' proposition: the Ikemen would get the assistant minority leader's post, plus the meaningless chairmanship of the Senate Republicans' Committee on Committees.

P: Ev Dirksen came to the White House, theoretically escorting a Boys' Clubs of America prizewinner, sashayed forth to announce, again from the White House steps, that he had the leader's job won.

By that time the Senate's Eisenhower Republicans agreed that it all seemed confusing. They were about to slate Vermont's Aiken for leader and California's Thomas Kuchel for assistant leader. But with defections such as that of Kentucky's Morton, they could not quite count enough votes. And they were sure to be able to count even fewer for so long as Ike continued to throw his weight toward "unity" behind Senate Republicans who had consistently opposed him.

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