GOPost-Mortem

Up in Chicago's Palmer House one day last week rose speaker after speaker to pledge renewed allegiance to Liberty, the Constitution and the American Way of Life, assure his fellow members of the Republican National Committee that they had fought a good fight, been beaten only by the New Deal's unbeatable Relief funds. Vice President-reject Frank Knox generously conceded that the return of prosperity and Republicans' failure to "popularize" their issues had had something to do with it. The only harsh words at the consolation party came from two uninvited guests.

No committeeman, but flushed with assurance by virtue of his standing as a re-elected Republican, was Representative Everett M. Dirksen of Illinois. "You're just salving your own consciences here this morning," roared he. "I thoroughly disagree with all the self-admiration that has been expressed here. . . . We haven't got even enough members of Congress to force a roll call. And still we listen to rhetorical pap . . . like 'the American way of life.' "

"What would you do?" cried an indignant member. Congressman Dirksen did not reply.

Representative Hamilton Fish of New York, present by proxies from Alaska and Puerto Rico, won himself no welcome by gloating: "I carried Roosevelt's own district for Landon and myself by 24,000-- and that's more than the rest of you can say." Long famed as a Red-baiter, Congressman Fish has stepped out since Nov. 3 as a would-be liberalizer of the GOP. Last week his target was National Chairman John D. M. Hamilton, who had called the Committee's first post election meeting to act on his offer to resign.

Chairman Hamilton, boomed the towering, buck-toothed Representative from New York, was a fine fellow, but as a representative of the "old. reactionary elements" he must be dropped. "If word goes out today that the Republican Party has learned no lesson," warned he, "it may be too late and our Party perishes before we can act to liberalize it in Congress. . . . Hamilton's fight on the Social Security Act drove millions out of the Party in the big industrial cities."

Challenged from the floor on this point, Representative Fish blurted: "If you want me to tell the whole truth I will, and it will be 100% worse than what I've said. The Republican Party itself inspired the sending out of vicious attacks on Social Security in pay envelopes. Why. I have letters from William Allen White and other liberals denouncing this practice in such language that I could not use it before this assembly."

Solidly backed by his vice-chairmen-- Connecticut's longtime Boss John Henry Roraback. Oregon's Ralph E. Williams, rich and buxom Mrs. Worthington Scranton of Pennsylvania and Mrs. John E. Hillman of Colorado--Chairman Hamilton did not rise to the Fish bait. On his own behalf he said only: "I have no particular defense to make of the last campaign. There were lots of errors, but I said at the start there would be."

The 74-to-2 vote of confidence which the Committee proceeded to give its chairman could be interpreted in either or both of two ways: 1) as a vote of confidence in John Hamilton; 2) as proof that no one else wanted his job. That job is not merely to reorganize a shattered Party. It is also, as Treasurer Charles B. ("Barney") Goodspeed explained last week, to wipe out a campaign deficit of $901,501.61, owing mostly for billboard and radio advertising. Chairman Hamilton, reported Treasurer Goodspeed. spent $67,000 less than the budgeted $6,300,000. But the Committee's receipts, like its candidate's votes, had fallen far short of its hopes.

Planning early and frequent money and morale-raising swings around the country. Chairman Hamilton will make his headquarters in Washington. Kansas acquaintances do not expect Mrs. Hamilton to join him there, soon or ever. For his full-time services, the Committee decided to pay $15,000 per year, plus $10,000 for "base expenses." Cracked Insurgent Republican William Edgar Borah: "That, as I understand it, is the customary salary of receivers."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.