Smoothing & Stirring

On a misty, muggy Washington morning last week, House Speaker Joseph Martin Jr. tucked his shaggy forelock under a soft fedora, put on his new gale coat, shook hands with Vice President Richard Nixon and boarded a chartered airliner. A few minutes later, Dick Nixon climbed into another plane, took his seat and promptly fell asleep. His immediate destination was Columbus; Martin's was Newark. The two top Republican congressional campaigners were off on the first legs of journeys which would carry them the length and breadth of the land before the November elections.

Factional Peacemaker. Setting foot on New Jersey soil, Joe Martin stepped squarely into the middle of a fratricidal party brawl over the senatorial candidacy of liberal-minded Republican Clifford Case. No man was better suited than Martin to play the part of factional peacemaker. To Case backers, Martin appeared as President Eisenhower's loyal congressional leader. To Case's right-wing enemies, Martin was as close to a conservative "Mr. Republican" as anybody since Bob Taft. He carried the same message to the politicians who chewed cigars in the back seat of his campaign limousine and to the ladies who sipped pink punch while he spoke from the rose-wreathed platform of the Hackensack Women's Club. Said Martin: it would ill serve Republicans of any stripe to turn Dwight Eisenhower over to a hostile Democratic Congress.

Even Martin's minor muffs--e.g., referring to Representative Frank C. Osmers Jr. as "my old friend Francis Osborne," and starting to call Cliff Case a "candidate for the presidency of the United . . ."--only served to verify that Joe Martin was the same genuine G.O.P. article who had been campaigning for more than four decades. And his pitch for Case was straight and hard. Said he: "You can't make a better contribution to Eisenhower, to the country, or to the Republican Party than to elect Cliff Case to the Senate this fall." Breathed Case: "Thank God for Joe Martin." On that point, at least, New Jersey Republicans seemed agreed.

Horrible Example. While Martin was trying to smooth things out, Dick Nixon was trying to stir things up. He was confronted by a distressing situation in Ohio's Taftland, where the G.O.P.'s gusty Senate Candidate George Bender probably has a slight edge over Cleveland Democrat Tom Burke, but is running a poor second in public interest to the Cleveland Indians. So far Bender has failed to whistle up even a mild breeze of enthusiasm. In Republican state headquarters, where some 60 paid employees bustled about two years ago, a bare 20 were on duty last week. Only 30% of the state ticket's $750,000 budget has been raised--and some of the fattest Republican cats have flatly refused to contribute this year.

Nixon's mission, therefore, was to arouse the party professionals. Using Maine as his horrible example, Nixon pounded home the dangers of disunity and apathy. Trying out a line he was to use in other states along his campaign trail, Nixon advised the Ohio professionals to plug hard on Republican successes in dealing with "that four-headed monster that was Korea, Communism, corruption and controls"

Then Nixon headed for Kansas (where G.O.P. factions are busily engaged in stabbing each other) and Missouri while Joe Martin was off for Kentucky to lend a helping hand to able, hard-pressed Senator John Sherman Cooper, thence to Indiana and Minnesota.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.