Chance for Glory

In the current attempt of Midwestern Republican Congressmen to get Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson fired from his job, the G.O.P. is faced with 1) a scandal, 2) a dilemma, and 3) a challenge.

The scandal: the reigning farm price-support program that costs the U.S. nearly $5 billion a year, while it makes worse the situation it pretends to cure, distorts the normal workings of agricultural economics, corrupts farmers, and shows in nearly every way that it is obsolete in the age of new farm technology (TIME, Aug. 19).

The dilemma: the fact that Ezra Benson, in campaigning for reforms that are the most tentative steps toward correcting the scandal (e.g., lowering minimum price supports from 75% of parity to 60%), has become such a convenient political target that Midwestern Republicans would like to dump him before election time. Two of the dump-Benson Congressmen, Nebraska's A. L. (for Arthur Lewis) Miller and Phil Weaver, had the gall to go to the President last week to attack a member of his Cabinet. They argued that Benson will lose the Republicans 20 to 25 House seats and five Midwestern governors. Face to face with the President, they did not quite have the nerve to demand Benson's resignation. But they suggested meaningfully that maybe if the anti-Benson heat got hot enough, Benson might resign of his own accord. They got a stony presidential look in return.

The President was already on record with a plain answer that was a forthright choice of moral right over political expediency. Asked about Benson's prospects at his press conference, Ike said: "He is honest in his great effort to find proper, reasonable, sensible programs. When we find a man of this dedication, this kind of courage, this kind of intellectual and personal honesty, we should say to ourselves, 'We just don't believe that America has come to the point where it wants to dispense with the services of that kind of a person.' "

The challenge: many a Republican Congressman admits privately what he would not dare say publicly, i.e., that Ezra Benson is indeed on the right tack. If the Republicans really wanted to defend moral right over political expediency, they could take just such a campaign stand this fall. Perhaps, for so open and honest a pitch, they might lose congressional seats this year. But for the majority of U.S. taxpayers, both on farms and in the city, they would make it clear that the Democrats, and not the Republicans, are the party in favor of perpetrating the scandal.

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