That Old Feeling

Election time was 16 long months away, but Republicans as well as Democrats were already beginning to hear the call. Across the nation, in surprising numbers, Republicans were cheerfully spending $100 bills for a platter of chicken and a hard seat at a fund-raising dinner. The California party overflowed Los Angeles' Biltmore Bowl and took in $130,000. At Milwaukee a fortnight ago, the Wisconsin G.O.P. $100-a-plate affair, featuring Senator Robert A. Taft as speaker, drew 2,250 enthusiastic listeners. More dinners were on the way.

Almost all G.O.P. professionals seemed convinced that their opponent in 1952 would be Harry Truman, and with such campaign items as mink coats, Korean casualties and home freezers, many talked confidently of being able to take good care of Harry this time.

Dark Horse. Busiest of all were the backers of Ohio's Taft. They flitted back from sorties into the countryside with broad grins and reports that scores of delegates ("So many that it is almost frightening," said one) were clamoring for Taft in '52. They were in no hurry to line up delegates, remembering that Taft had been a winter-book favorite in 1940, '44 and '48, without ever being able to get to the post. They feared one dark horse: Ike Eisenhower.

The We-Want-Ike faction was hard at work. Such shrewd politicos as Pennsylvania's James Duff, Kansas' Frank Carlson and Harry Darby were saying openly that Eisenhower would definitely run--and as a Republican, not a Democrat. A wealthy New Jersey lawyer named Amos J. Peaslee, who backed Harold Stassen in 1948, was rounding up a group of influential Republicans to talk up Stassen again as a candidate.

Top, but a Drop. In the latest Gallup poll, Eisenhower was still everybody's favorite--Republicans (30%), Democrats (40%) and independents (35%). Harry Truman's popularity was at a new recorded low (only 24% approved of his handling of the presidency, said Gallup). Actually Eisenhower had dropped about 8% in popularity among the Republicans, but Bob Taft, the No. 2 man, had not gained. What Ike lost was divided up between New York's Governor Thomas E. Dewey (16%), who announced last fall without qualification that he was an Ike man; Stassen (10%), who says he is also for the general; and California's Earl Warren (13%) who isn't saying.

Way down on the list, among the batch of possibilities which Gallup called "Others," was presumably Douglas MacArthur, who said he wasn't interested. The pros seemed to consider him more valuable as an issue than as a candidate. But he worried the Eisenhower backers on another score. They hoped that MacArthur would not take it into his head to come out against the candidacy of his onetime aide.

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