"Where Does the Party Stand?"

As the Republican National Committee plowed into Des Moines through six-inch snows and below-zero temperatures for an election post-mortem last week, the weather matched the mood of National Chairman Meade Alcorn. Ever since Democrats clobbered the Republicans at the polls, Alcorn has been picking apart November's returns for a clue to what happened to the G.O.P. His report: "Our party has suffered a humiliating defeat. We took a bad beating. There are no alibis -but there are reasons."

One reason: strong opposition. "We are being outvoted, outtalked, outspent and outworked by an alert, disciplined, politically astute opposition." Another reason, which rang jarringly in conservative ears: "We must get rid of the right-to-work tag pinned on our coattails." Still another: the Democrat-labor alliance. "Organized labor was able to put in one state [Maine] in behalf of opposition candidates more field men than the Republican Party had available nationally."

Losing the Anchor. Alcorn called on a research analyst, Claude Robinson of Princeton, N.J., who flashed a series of charts to point up still other causes. For one, the party is losing the flourishing white-collar voters who should be its anchor; 52% voted Republican in 1954, 38% in 1958. And it is losing its appeal to youth and becoming the party of the older voter. In November Republicans got 49% of the age-50-and-over vote, 37% of the age-49-and-under.

The 101 committeemen and women present welcomed Alcorn's carefully drawn nine-point reorganizing program -two million more precinct workers, year-long fund-raising campaigns, more emphasis on college-age voters and teenagers, etc. But when it came to the philosophy that the remodeled machine should push, conservatives were less than enthusiastic. And they had the meeting's stronger voices.

Paging the President. One of the loudest was Pennsylvania's tariff-championing Congressman Richard M. Simpson, whose key advice to candidates as congressional campaign chairman last fall had been to ignore the White House. Pressed to get back to his work in Congress, Simpson arranged to get on the program right after the delegates heard a message from

President Eisenhower. Wired Ike: POLITICAL ACTIVITY MUST BE A MATTER OF UNREMITTING EFFORT. IT MUST GO ON 365

DAYS A YEAR. Boomed Simpson, when he took the floor: "I'm encouraged. The President used the words 'make unremitting effort' of a political nature. We've been doing that for a long time. I call upon the White House to give us some of that unremitting political planned effort." He got heavier applause than the President.

Next day the meeting heard from the new Senate campaign chairman, Arizona's right-wing Barry Goldwater. Goldwater had flown out from Washington, been weathered in at Chicago, wired an urgent message. Alcorn's strategies, he said, are

MECHANICALLY O.K., BUT THE MOST IMPORTANT INGREDIENT IS MISSING. WHERE DOES THE PARTY STAND; WHAT ARE ITS PRINCIPLES? Goldwater knew what the principles ought to be: LET THE PARTY DECLARE AGAINST CENTRALIZED GOVERNMENT . . . LET THE PARTY QUIT COPYING THE NEW DEAL, SEEKING ONLY FOR VOTES.

Emboldened by Simpson and Goldwater, Midwestern committeemen opened another file cabinet, urged the firing of Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson, whom they blame for the heavy G.O.P. losses in the Midwest. At that point Alcorn got the anti-Benson motion tabled, closed the two-day session on a note of hearty approval for the Alcorn program.

But Meade Alcorn would be kidding himself and his titular boss in the White House if he failed to hurry home with the message that the Eisenhower stock was at a new low with most of the party, that the oldtime conservatives -who never put much stock in Ike anyway -were ready, willing and thirsting to take control if something didn't happen fast.

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