Steamroller Stopped

Overconfidence beat the Republicans in 1948--and it can beat them again in 1952. Two years ago the Democrats began to slip, and that smug feeling overcame one wing of the Republican Party. The whole Taft candidacy was based on the assumption that millions of voters were panting to vote Republican for the first time.

Bob Taft and his friends deny that they think this, but last week at Chicago their decisions showed they did not care how much ammunition they handed over to the Democrats.

"You're Another!" The contested-delegates fight is a moral issue, and the circumstances of the 1952 campaign demand that the Republicans handle moral issues with the most scrupulous care. Millions of voters are, in fact, disgusted with the scandals and corruption of the Democratic Party, but it does not follow that these voters are ready to vote Republican.

To transform public disgust with Democratic graft into Republican votes, the G.O.P. needs clean hands. This was proved last fall when Republican National Chairman Guy Gabrielson and a few other Republicans got dishonorable mention in the course of investigation into Washington influence-peddling. Up to that point, exposure of the Democrats had been rolling along with ever-mounting momentum. After that point, the steam began to go out of G.O.P. exposures of Democratic corruption.

Last week the same Guy Gabrielson led the Taft-faction efforts to steal seats at the convention from Eisenhower delegates who had been elected according to law.

Paying Texas with Georgia. The national committee, with Gabrielson calling the shots, seated 76 Taft delegates and 21 Ike delegates. Taft himself took credit for a "generous" offer to compromise the Texas fight. The key to this generosity was the theft of 15 seats in Georgia. The background:

When Henry Zweifel, Taft's No. i man in Texas, turned elected Eisenhower delegates out of his state convention, a nationwide outcry went up. Usually, such fights over delegate credentials attract little interest. This time it was different, precisely because so many Republicans realized that in 1952 the party could not win unless the nominee had clean hands.

The Taft managers were caught between the highly damaging publicity of the Texas steal and their need for the stolen Texas votes. Texas was in the public eye, but the Georgia contest had received little publicity--for a good reason. The case for the Taft delegation from Georgia was so weak that not even Taft leaders took it seriously. A month ago top Taft leaders had no intention of making a serious fight on Georgia.

But at the last minute they changed their minds. They grabbed 15 Georgia votes, and then bowed to public opinion by giving back to Ike 16 of the votes they had stolen in Texas. The idea was that the public and the convention, not knowing the details of the Georgia case, would approve the Texas "compromise."

Moral issues, once they are raised in U.S. politics, have a way of persisting and growing. The story of the national committee's decisions shocked scores of delegates and convinced many that the party's future depended on whether the convention itself could halt the steamroller.

The delegates' indignation welled up in support of a motion by Governor Arthur B. Langlie of Washington to change a convention rule. The Langlie "fair play" rule forbade sharply contested delegations, temporarily seated by the national committee, from voting on one another's contests.

All large groups in the convention except Taft stalwarts joined in support of Langlie's motion. This moral upsurge put the steamroller into a ditch. The "fair play" vote brought the anti-Taft forces together, proving to wavering delegates that Taft did not dominate the convention and the party as it dominated the lame duck national committee. Taft's managers had gone too far, and the kickback was a tremendous new impetus for Eisenhower's candidacy.

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