Explanations

Republicans, who thought they were in the know before Nov. 2, had a variety of explanations for what hit them. Most of them seemed to add up to the fact that they, themselves, were to blame.

P: Governor Thomas E. Dewey (at Albany) : "I was quite surprised by the very low vote. It looks as though two or three million Republicans stayed home, out of overconfidence. That one fact stands out from the returns so far."

P: Speaker Joseph W. Martin Jr.: "The Republican Party digressed too far from the people. We offered them too many Brahmins: too many plutocrats. I have nothing against plutocrats, except too many of them have got into the party."

P: New York's Senator Irving M. Ives: "The defeat of the Republicans can be ascribed to . . . the inability of the 80th Congress to get together on a forward-looking, liberal program ... We are moving forward in this country. We are not static. Unless a political party recognizes that fact . . . that political party is not going to get very far."

P: Senator George D. Aiken: "The Old Guard is a self-perpetuating board of trustees who would rather see the party go down to defeat than give up control of the machinery ... I had hoped that Dewey would get in and be able to renovate the party. But now we'll have to do our own housecleaning if we are ever to elect a Republican President."

P: Senator Robert A. Taft: "It is almost impossible to put an administration out of office at the very peak of a boom."

P: Dewey Campaign Strategist Ed Jaeckle: "It was obvious all along that Dewey was carrying a lot of excess baggage--excess baggage like Taft, "Curly" Brooks, Ball, Robertson, and the rest of them. The [voters] ... apparently figured Dewey would have a hell of a time with those people and that this was the time to clean them all out . . ."

P: Congressman Fred Hartley Jr., coauthor of the Taft-Hartley Act: "Mr. Dewey started acting like the President of the United States too soon."

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