The Wisconsin Primary

So overwhelming was Senator McCarthy's victory in the Wisconsin primary that it suggested a thorough re-examination of the 1952 national campaign. It did not necessarily call for a reappraisal of Joe himself. He was not accused of being a poor campaigner but of making unsupported accusations against individuals and of distorting facts. These charges were neither proved nor disproved at the ballot box.

The significance of the Wisconsin primary was in how the voters of one of the more enlightened states reacted to the debate over McCarthyism. Joe was up against stern opposition. His opponent, Lawyer Len Schmitt, was able and well known. Schmitt put on a vigorous, adequately financed campaign in which he got a respectful hearing. Wisconsin law allows members of one party to vote in the other's primary, and Democrats were strongly urged to get in there and beat Joe. Democrats by the thousands apparently did vote in the Republican primary --but most of them voted for McCarthy. His vote reached 538,000, topping by 100,000 the total vote of all other candidates, Republican and Democratic. He ran well in Milwaukee wards where organized labor is strong. In a front-page editorial after the primary, the state C.I.O. News said that many C.I.O. members had voted for McCarthy despite the efforts of union leaders. The McCarthy showing was notably good in Democratic South Milwaukee, which is heavily Polish. Arthur Bliss Lane, former ambassador to Poland, had made a pro-McCarthy speech linking Reds in Government to failures of U.S. foreign policy. McCarthy also did well in two Irish wards of Milwaukee and in Republican rural districts throughout the state. He showed some weakness in German areas of North Milwaukee and in the middle-class suburbs, which are normally

Republican and contain a higher-than-average proportion of independent voters.

Peculiar and Wonderful. Two explanations of McCarthy's showing (given by extreme partisans) were: 1) Wisconsin voters are just peculiar, 2) Joe is wonderful. Neither explanation seems to fit the facts of the Wisconsin primary.

Wisconsin has a good balance of rural and urban voters, a record of alert citizenship and no tradition of following reactionary demagogues. From county to county it has considerable variety in occupation, national strains and religion, and yet McCarthy carried 69 of the 71 counties.*Under those circumstances, it is hard to see how McCarthy's appeal can be peculiar to Wisconsin.

On the other hand, the state's admiration for Joe seems to be sharply limited. Many of the people who voted for him openly voiced their reservations. Said one last week: "We know Joe is no saint. We know that some of the methods he uses aren't too good. We know that he isn't too smart sometimes. But we're convinced that where there's smoke there's fire. And Joe has done an awful lot to point out where there's smoke billowing up. There have been Reds in Government, and Joe has been the only man to do anything about it. He's acted all alone, while everyone else has been standing around."

It was hardly an accurate picture of Joe's career. Specifically, it is untrue that Joe is the only man who has done anything about Reds in Government. But Joe (with the help of some of his enemies) has spread the idea that Joe is the one & only Red hunter.

Eisenhower, for instance, has attacked the "unjust damaging of reputations," and this is taken as an anti-McCarthy statement. But Eisenhower has not yet made an explicit recognition of the priceless service to their country rendered by men who justly damaged the reputations of people who really were Communists, e.g., his running mate, Senator Nixon. Nor has Eisenhower made a vigorous effort to make the Reds-in-Government issue an essential part of his campaign.

Stevenson has denounced "McCarthyism" in strong language: "Pursuit of phantoms . . . climate of fear and hysteria . . . loyalty inquisitions . . . burning down the barn to kill the rats . . ."At Albuquerque, Stevenson did say that "the Communist conspiracy within the U.S. deserves the attention of every American citizen and the sleepless concern of responsible agencies of Government." But in the same speech Stevenson also said that American Communists were not, on the whole, very important.

Phantoms and Reality. The Wisconsin primary indicates that a large part of the American people believe American Communists are important and do not believe that the pursuit of Communists is the "pursuit of phantoms." The phrase, like "witch hunt," indicates that the user does not believe there is any right way to carry on such a pursuit because there cannot be a sensible pursuit of a phantom.

McCarthy was helped by this kind of attack on "McCarthyism." Apparently a surprising number of Wisconsin voters would rather pursue Reds in Government in McCarthy's way than refuse to recognize the reality of the Communist conspiracy in the U.S.

The Wisconsin lesson to the Eisenhower camp seemed to be that a lot of regular Democrats may vote for candidates who make it clear that they consider the Communists-in-Government issue to be important. To capitalize on this fact, Ike will not have to retreat an inch from his opposition to the "unjust damaging of reputations."

McCarthy has grown in power because millions of Americans think he is "the only one" really against the internal Communist threat. There is no point in blaming the voters for that mistake, nor will clamor against "McCarthyism" correct it. Other and far better men have to prove that they are more effectively against Communist infiltration than McCarthy is.

*Schmitt's two counties: Lincoln and Douglas.

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