OLD SAWS AND NEW BROOMS

...prosperity, continued social progress, and the containment of Russia, the Democratic...

...Carrying 17 Republican Senators with him...

...The "Psychological Barometer" poll suggests that Lodge has clouded his article for nothing...

...Yet he also sees no possibility for the Senate GOP minority to support with its votes the policy of Government economy...

...The activity seems vital to them, and they are sincerely interested in it...

...Seventy-five per cent of adults questioned in 137 selected cities and towns were "against socialism in America...

...He ap-ptears sincerely to take it for granted .that only the Senate majority, with its power to appoint committee chairmen and set up the calendar, has the responsibility to make a party record...

...The Senator ducks the conservative issue completely, and almost ducks the issue of economy...

...The Lodge program in the March Atlantic stands, he says, on the "strength and self-reliance of the individual human being...

...It would be easier for Lodge to support this charge if Truman had not by now surrounded himself with advisers solidly committed to these goals, glittering or not...

...But again, the Republicans, with their opposition to Federal regulation of prices, are not prepared to make an issue out of what may prove a five to ten billion dollar bonanza to the big gas producers...

...Of course, you do look forward and should, to what your platform is going to be, and try to keep members from being completely inconsistent with that...

...And, in apparent agreement with the GOP platform writers, a majority of those polled themselves defined "socialism" as "government ownership or control of industry, utilities, natural resources, health and welfare, medicine and doctors...

...For they have the Truman program, be it as controversial as oysters in Kansas...

...Liberty Against Socialism' . . . overstates the case," said the New York Times...

...we offer you a self-executing, self-liquidating plan...

...But the Republicans are in a position to open up only one of these chinks...

...The majority view in and out of Government, however, is that prosperity will still be a safe issue for the ins...

...Lodge effectively punished Taft's claim to leadership...

...Thomas Dewey, in their view, had supported the platform so little that it had sunk out of sight...

...On the charge that the Administration has a static and sterile approach toward peacemaking, the Republicans thus far have not even made any noteworthy speeches...

...But there is a limit to what you can do...

...But the pollsters went farther...

...In 1950...

...The Republican McConnell bill went to the Senate with a Southern Democratic label and with mischievous Southern Democratic amendments...

...They made scarcely any effort to argue the case which the Me-Connell substitute presented—the case for voluntary practices and evolutionary reform and against forced compliance...

...Abstracting GOP prospects on a nationwide basis, however, one must conclude at the mid-point of the Congressional session that those prospects are in direct proportion to Democratic vulnerabilities...

...Were the Republicans ready with a record on economy, even a convincing program for balancing the budget, reporters here would agree with Taft that economy would prove "the best issue and the soundest...

...Even by being more for McConnell and less against Truman, they might have avoided this fate...

...As this is written...

...While remaining stuck on Formosa, they have left it to Sens...

...The elephant, in short, may never forget, but neither does he learn much...

...Lodge, meanwhile, has avoided one pitfall into which many of his fellow Republicans were tempted after the British election...

...To the Republican center, there was no possibility of resting on the GOP platform of 1948...

...Lodge to abolish the Electoral College and split unit electoral returns in each state...

...If there is indeed any point in seeking ocean-hopping trends, which is doubtful, it may be we should seek one in the Right's acceptance of social welfare changes made by liberal, labor, and progressive movements...

...Minority Leaders Martin and Halleck forced into the position of rebels the 64 GOP Representatives who voted against restoring the Rules Committee's powers...

...He required an almost solid Democratic vote to do so, however, and the resolution went to the House with Taft and Lodge fighting each other for every Republican vote in that chamber...

...News...

...Sixty-six per cent of those polled favored the TVA and other regional authorities, even though calling them socialistic...

...Lodge, Sen...

...In the House, the leadership has done even less by a Republican record...

...In a non-Presidential year, results in Congressional districts and even in states are often determined by personalities...

...And I think that if we keep it up, we can make it stick...

...Byrd of V ginia at one extreme and Douglas of Illinois at the other-to specify possible cuts...

...Public response to McMahon has been heavy enough to attract Republicans seeking an issue, but it is not one their attitude toward Truman's foreign policy has prepared them to seize...

...The lesson in this for the GOP is that the people fear the name more than the thing itself, just as more primitively organized tribes of men have done in ages past...

...II Time will at least neutralize the GOP statements of principles, though Taft and others keep up the cry of socialism...

...Judging from the attitude of the Republican press, oblivion will be accepted as merciful...

...Those who followed the, Republican voting record in 1947, 1948, and 1949 would agree with Taft, but would have to set the Republican percentage much higher than 20...

...I was afraid of that at first," Taft told me, "but I don't think it turned out that way...

...It is obvious that "me too" at the very least did not hurt the British Conservatives...

...Dewey at Princeton found it "instructive for the Republican Party" that Winston Churchill and the Tories were taking campaign credit for originating the British Government's social program and were "promising to do it better...

...But Taft now disagrees with the Herald Tribune's judgment that the statement contributed to "underscoring of divisions within the party...

...Taft's failure to strive for a Sen* ate Republican record deserves analysis, for his experience as -0f Ppolicy leader has certainly i him all the angles...

...Did you notice that the first thing the new Conservative Governments of Australia and New Zealand did was to increase old age pensions...

...And the Republicans who hail a world-wide turning of the tide are more forgetful than the elephant...

...These issues might revive the national quest for a new broom...

...Some of the chinks in the Democratic armor might faintly suggest so—comfort in office (shown at the Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner), shifts in employment figures, prolonged risks in handling the coal strike, talk of a static Administration attitude toward peacemaking...

...Even before Britons went to the polls, Gov...

...Fifty-nine per cent favored socialistic government housing projects...

...As this was written, the Democrats were awaiting with interest the final tabulations on February unemployment figures...

...McCarthy from making a particular speech [questioning the loyalty of 57 State Department employees]—which might make our party position difficult— when, as in the case of McCarthy's speech, nobody even knew he was going to make it...

...Last December the Link "Psychological Barometer" poll, one of the oldest in the nation, completed a study by which the Republicans might have pre-tested their blast on socialism...

...As this is written, floor votes have barely gotten under way...

...The Democrats have all the odds...

...To date only one new piece of legislation has had a strong Republican identification—the resolution offered by Sen...

...When you come to legislation, party discipline is a very mild power...

...The smashing Labor victory in the first postwar election was followed by a Republican sweep in the 1946 Congressional elections...

...The difficulty is particularly acute, moreover, when Taft and dissidents like Lodge attempt to draft "social legislation without socialism...

...Even in Taft's view, the result of the much labored 1950 platform is that "nothing has been very much changed one way or another...

...If a Republican case is made for a transitional stage in fair employment practices, it will have to be made by Taft, who has a bill similar to McConnell's...

...Robert A. Taft, Ohio, Republican policy leader, told me the other day...

...And in spite of what Truman said about it, I think 'Liberty Against Socialism' is a good battlecry...

...Taft believes "the best issue and the soundest" for the 1950 Congressional elections is "the deficit and the further increase in spending proposed by the Truman Administration...

...Irving M. Ives, and at least four other Republican Senators are, contrary to Taft's expectations, attempting a GOP platform of their own...

...Like a hole in the head, the Republican New York Herald Tribune has implied in judging need of the new document...

...But for the most part he avoids concrete comparisons with specific Fair Deal bills which, he says, are only "glittering legislative goals" to an Administration that does not really believe in them...

...Socialism, spending, and "softness toward Communism" appear to be the Republican choices...

...Though crying "economy" in a chorus after Truman dropped his heavy budget, the Senate Report cans have by and large left it two Democrats—Sen...

...While admitting their socialistic bias, the electorate might prefer many Truman proposals to Lodge's for non-political reasons—definite-ness, workability, scope, and so on...

...And in frustrating Lucas attempt, however much they "kepi faith" with the 1950 potato planter they both failed to follow through on the economy cry and saved for Secretary Brannan his best ammunition for his own plan...

...For example, how could a minority leadership restrain Sen...

...Martin and Halleck learned in 1948 that Truman had a way of campaigning on the Republican Congressional record...

...But the GOP statement of principles might have been written for the Martins and the Hallecks, except that, as Taft says, it did not "damn the British and withdraw all aid from Europe in one gasp...

...The demand for it was so agitated that we would have been criticized more for not going ahead with it...

...Omitting any consideration of new chinks appearing in the Democratic armor, the Republican Party still stands where it did after the galling defeat of 1948 and the closely contested reshuffling of control which put Taft again in the spot-light...

...When the Republicans portray the Truman Administration in this role they are setting up a straw man in order to destroy it There was more than a political adage beckoning Guy Gabrielson and the Republican National Committee to new literary labors, of course...

...It may do more harm than good...

...The ordinary Senator, frankly, is more concerned with his acts as a legislator than he is with what the party thinks about it...

...They think it is to the welfare of their section, and that without it they will not get their constituents' votes, with a consequent loss to their party's position...

...Lodge could make a better case out of the President's private surrender to the oil interests over the Kerr-Thomas natural gas measure...

...Before 1942 he was a member of the faculty of the University of Illinois...

...Henry Cabot Lodge, a leader of the anti-stuffed shirt forces in the GOP, had already put the finishing touches to his "Modernize the GOP" for the March Atlantic Monthly when President Truman went into the ancient history of the Republican cry of "socialism" at the $530,000 Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner...

...As far as the day-to-day operation in the Senate is concerned," Taft says, "I don't think a minority „ party has to pursue a party policy...

...And on Taft's own statement, he "couldn't get them to go along" to include education in a section on Federal aid which stipulated both local control and an economic means test...

...They allowed the Southern Democrats to make what hay there was out of beating the Administration's FEPC bill...

...In the first place, it was more specific than I had hoped on the Taft-Hartley Law, the Brannan Plan, Yalta, and many other things...

...No consideration of the party's common interests has restrained Republican Sens...

...Fair Deal health, labor, and farm legislation, he says, are to be kept only as "glittering goals...

...When you are out of control, individual Senators can go out on the floor and fight a program, do what they want to, win or lose, and then go back and wait till something else comes along that interests them...

...Martin and Halleck will apparently wear their 1948 expression of pained surprise if Truman effectively kills the GOP civil rights plank with the record House vote on FEPC...

...Electoral College reform is political only in an administrative sense...

...W. McNEIL LOWRY is chief Washington correspondent of the Cox newspapers the Dayton Daily News, the Atlanta Journal, the Miami Daily News, and the Springfield (O...

...As matters stand, the issue will be fought out only in phrases, not facts, on both sides...

...He does offer what he calls "specifications" in tax, health, security, labor, and agricultural legislation...

...He himself was the subject of a Progressive article —"Corn Cribs and Ballot Boxes" — when in 1948 he opened up the grain storage issue in the Presidential Campaign, work which won him the Sigma Delta Chi award for outstanding Washington correspondence...

...I opposed the general idea and only agreed to it when everybody else seemed to want it," Sen...

...The outs, of any party, can always use such material effectively, and if unemployment should hit above five million during the campaign, there would be much less nervousness on the part of the voters in turning over Democratic seats...

...The Republicans have yet to agree on what their own program means, or indeed whether they have one at all, and if they have, whose views it represents...

...Sen...

...Wherry of Nebraska, McCarthy of Wisconsin, Knowland of California, or anyone else from making issues...

...At this point the "Psychological Barometer" could have told the GOP to let her rip...

...Transparent manipulations of the Democratic legislative calendar may lend color, in the minds of many voters, to Lodge's charge of insincerity aimed at the Administration...

...We Republicans should say to the voter," Lodge wrote, "we offer you social legislation without socialism, a welfare society without a welfare state...

...McMahon and Tydings, both Democrats, to make the only capital out of new approaches to peace...

...When you start out to economize in the Congress," he says, "you will find that 20% of the Republicans are interested in the specific appropriation up for a vote, and you can't get their votes...

...said the Tribune, "being misrepresented by the opposition as the essence of Republicanism...

...Are we back to 1946, or even to 1942...

...On the politically charged issues, the Republican leadership in the Senate has laid the gentlest of hands...

...He has been in Washington off and on since 1942, except for a year as associate editor of the Dayton Daily News...

...More specific issues for the 1950 campaign will have to come from individual and party voting records in Congress, and it is here that well-meaning Republican editors are in greatest pain...

...Eighty-one per cent wanted pay roll taxes for old age and security benefits, though the majority considered these part of a socialistic program...

...Was there no one in the policy-statement huddles at the Mayflower Hotel and on Capitol Hill to question the wisdom of citing the TVA as a threat to "basic American principles...

...And even if Taft can "keep it up and make it stick," the 1950 Republican slogan is not likely to scare the voter out of endorsing specific measures of the Truman Fair Deal...

...Whether the Republican Party needed the recently adopted statement of principles in this non-Presidential year is still the subject of endless argument among the politicians and pundits...

...British Conservatives did not get anywhere," he said, "until they stopped acting like American Republicans...

...And the GOP's big contributors, way out on the extreme right, wanted to know specifically what their money would- buy before reaching for the rubber band on their bankroll...

...Lodge was here pocketing both the "socialism" slogan and the "welfare state" epithet which Dewey, speaking at Princeton last month, attacked as his party's greatest blunder...

...The Reg publicans left to the Administration leader, Scott Lucas, the only effor to end the potato price support scandal...

...Presumably, he is here trying to avoid both the "me too" criticism and the socialism epithet he himself applies...