JUDGMENTS & PROPHECIES

On the Election

The pro-Ike MADISON, Wis. STATE JOURNAL: The Republicans deserved to lose this one, not because their record was bad, but because they failed to tell the voters how good it actually was. The Republicans had a record of winning and maintaining the peace, cutting taxes, beginning the job of eradicating Communists and Communist influence from government. But the Republicans let the opposition call the signals.

Hearst's pro-Eisenhower, pro-McCarthy NEW YORK JOURNAL-AMERICAN: There are three chief causes for the comparatively good showing of the Republicans: 1) The honest-to-goodness grass roots campaign by Vice President Dick Nixon. 2) The dramatic last-minute appeal by Senator Joseph McCarthy to Republicans to forget their differences. 3) The eleventh-hour realization by Republican campaigners that they were in a fight and not punting in the moonlight.

The pro-Ike, pro-Douglas CHICAGO DAILY SUN-TIMES: This election may also be a last-time warning to the Old Guard to either get in step with the 20th century, as represented by Mr. Eisenhower, or bring the GOP down in ruins. The Nixons and the Knowlands have had their say and have been found wanting.

The Democratic ATLANTA CONSTITUTION: The Eisenhower crusade, which was shackled by Joe McCarthy, isolationists and the President's lack of positive leadership, lost momentum. The professionals about the President never really believed in the crusade; the amateurs who did were politically inept.

The pro-Ike PORTLAND OREGONIAN : The election was a crazy quilt stitched on personalities and local issues. The Democratic-Labor coalition hit the question of unemployment with everything it had, tied it up with administration indifference to tax relief for working people and "giveaway" of natural resources. The Eisenhower administration failed to put together a power program for the Northwest.

THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS: The Republicans didn't begin to put in their best licks till about three weeks ago, with President Eisenhower having to be prodded to roll up his sleeves. If he had slugged sooner, oftener and harder, his party would have kept and strengthened its control of Congress.

Moscow's IZVESTIA: American voters registered a protest against Republican policy, rather than support of the Democrats, who did not hold out any concrete program. The returns showed that the American people do not approve the policy of fascism and aggression promoted by the U.S.A.'s leading circles.

London's conservative DAILY TELEGRAPH: President Eisenhower is still a popular President. It seems likely it was his abiding prestige and personal intervention in the campaign that stopped the movement away from the Republican Party [from] becoming the landslide that was being freely predicted.

ROSCOE DRUMMOND, the Republican New York Herald Tribune's chief Washington correspondent: The real "secret weapon" of the Republican campaign and the Republican winner of 1954 is Ezra Taft Benson, the flexible-price-support Secretary of Agriculture. The "farm revolt" just didn't develop. And Secretary Benson has shown himself to be, not the bogeyman, but the strong man of the Republican campaign, second only to the President himself.

Pundit WALTER LIPPMANN: General Eisenhower needed to bring to the Republicans a sizable proportion of the voters who backed him in 1952. He has not done it because in the past two years he has not conducted an administration which won that support. The President has gone much too far in appeasing the Republican right wing, and not nearly far enough in building up the liberal wing. The real uninhibited Eisenhower is a liberal in international relations and welfare measures. It is impossible to make a majority party out of the old-guard Republicans. General Eisenhower rightly thinks of himself as a national figure above the party struggle destined to uphold the unity of the nation against division of interests and factions. He can still be that kind of President.

The Fair-Dealing Los ANGELES DAILY NEWS: The American people are obviously working up to something, but the stirrings at the roots have not yet burst into view. The combination of Democratic congressional increases and President Eisenhower's leadership seems to be exactly the bipartisan government the people want.

Columnists JOSEPH AND STEWART ALSOP : The biggest gainer, if the Republican Party is halfway sensible, will be President Dwight Eisenhower. The biggest losers are Joseph R. McCarthy and Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. It is clear the Republican Party has done much better than expected in 1954, because the Republicans had a great asset in Eisenhower. [A] cleanout occurred among the President's bitterest Republican enemies, the all-out adherents of Senator McCarthy. The Republicans can still win in 1956, if they only try to do it the Eisenhower way.

Columnist DREW PEARSON : The election focused more attention on the Republican demand, sure to roll up. for Eisenhower to run again. The stable of Democratic candidates has now increased. It includes: Governor Mennen ("Soapy") Williams, four-time governor of Michigan; Governor Frank Lausche, five times governor of Ohio; Senator Estes Kefauver, and Governor-elect George Leader of Pennsylvania (see U.S. AFFAIRS).

Britain's liberal MANCHESTER GUARDIAN: For the next two years the American government will be weakened. The division between the President and Congress is bad enough even when they are in the hands of one party. There are remedies. The first lies with the President. He must be a nonpartisan President. That is a great deal to ask of any man. It means abandoning any thought of seeking the Republican nomination in 1956.

THE LONDON NEWS CHRONICLE, spokesman for Britain's Liberal Party: America has had two years of bad government by a Republican Congress--and an unhappy Republican President with liberal leanings. She may now find that a Democratic Congress makes a better combination with President Eisenhower.

France's conservative LE FIGARO: President Eisenhower has always tried to obtain the collaboration of the opposition in working out his external policy. He will have his hands freer to realize his dream of a diplomatic policy exempt from all bipartisan considerations.

The conservative IL MESSAGGERO. Rome's largest newspaper: With the chauvinistic and isolationist influences of the Republican Old Guard eliminated or weakened, Eisenhower will be able to give greater impetus to his policy of collaboration with America's European allies. The famous Randall plan for greater liberalization of trade which failed to pass the previous Congress will probably find a more favorable reception in the next Congress.

The right-wing Republican CHICAGO TRIBUNE: The apparent defeat of Irving M. Ives in New York, even though it brings the multimillionaire social democrat Averell Harriman to the governor's chair, is no calamity, for it means the defeat of Thomas E. Dewey, the evil influence in the Republican Party for ten years. Ives was Dewey's hand-picked candidate. The foundering of the Dewey machine opens up the healthy prospect that the Pawling Machiavelli will not come to the 1956 Republican Convention with New York's 96 delegates in his pocket for the fourth time in a row.

The independent GREENSBORO, N.C. DAILY NEWS: "Peace and Prosperity" offset the "pocketbook nerves." The real power will remain where it has been during the last two years, in the hands of the normally conservative Republican-Democratic coalition.

Columnist DAVID LAWRENCE: There is a good prospect of a Republican sweep in 1956. The long-range trend has not departed from the Republicans and can be recovered when a popular personality is at the head of the ticket. It seems certain that Mr. Eisenhower will be drafted.

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