The Platform

If words mean what they say, the Republican Party platform, hammered together by a businesslike committee headed by Massachusetts' Senator Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., assured the world that the U.S. would not retreat into isolationism or abdicate its leadership for peace.

The platform unequivocally promised continuation of the bipartisan foreign policy. Republicans would "encourage" unity in western Europe; they believed in "collective security against aggression"; they would support U.N.; they "welcomed Israel into the family of nations"; they would "cherish" friendship with China; and "relentlessly pursue our aims for the universal limitation and control of arms and implements of war on a basis of reliable discipline against bad faith."

At the Water's Edge. There would be no secret foreign pacts. And the platform invited the "Minority Party to join us under the next Republican Administration in stopping partisan politics at the water's edge."

One plank was full of knots. It endorsed reciprocal trade agreements, but added a phrase which left the door open for high tariffs and a generally protectionist policy. Otherwise, the foreign policy section followed the precepts of Senator Vandenberg.

The domestic planks were cut pretty much to the policies of Robert Taft. The party reasserted its belief in "minimum" government controls and in the U.S. competitive system, the "mainspring of material well-being and political freedom." At the same time Republicans pledged themselves to protect "both workers and employers against coercion and exploitation," recognized the responsibilities of the Federal Government in housing, conservation, public health, security for the aged. But they vested final control of such matters in the states, not in Washington bureaucracy.

We the People. As to civil rights, the platform recommended prompt legislation "to end [the] infamy" of lynching; and urged abolition of the poll tax. The embarrassing point might be made that the 80th Congress had shown no great eagerness to tackle such civil-rights legislation. But the G.O.P. pledge would heighten the embarrassment of Democrats when they came to write their own plank.

In conclusion, said the G.O.P.: "Guided by these principles, with continuing faith in Almighty God, united in the spirit of brotherhood and using the skills, resources and blessings of liberty with which we are endowed, we the American people will courageously advance to meet the challenge of the future."

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