THE OLD GUARD RETREATS
The Old Guard Retreats -From Christian Science Monitorinsurgent victories In the reapportionment of United States Senate committees should be recognized as some*-thing more than mere personal...
...But it means more than that...
...hardly be so much "smoke" in Congress were there not some "fire" on the prairies...
...Apparently they are in the Senate because a good many Americans want tbeiA tbeia,, xtnro oould...
...It has been too easy to look upon the Insurgents in the Senate as political accidents, representing merely their own unorthodox views...
...persistent constituencies have so repeatedly re-elected them that many of them have come to key positions on commlttes through seniority...
...Today the Old Guard counts less than one-third of the Senate...
...But not only are adjustments wise lor the Republican party...
...The Old Guard Retreats -From Christian Science Monitorinsurgent victories In the reapportionment of United States Senate committees should be recognized as some*-thing more than mere personal triumphs for a few colorful and untamed Senators...
...It was a Repub- I Hcan senator who said not long ago 1 that unless a readjustment was effect- : cd within his party it faced the>pos- j slblllty of being bounded on the west by the Mississippi River...
...The most spectacular of the changes—admission of Robert M. La Follette, to the Finance Committee, that final stronghold of the Old Guard— means, of course, that the rock-ribbed Republican control of the committee which, among other things, writes tar-ifls, has been put in jeopardy...
...It means that in the North and West millions of Republican voters with progressive leanings will have a spokesman on that powerful committee, so long considered a "standpatters' club...
...Because many of them have been men of almost spectacular independence it has seemed that they could hardly be mouthpieces even of exuberant western constituencies...
...But gradually the Impression has percolated that they do speak for a great mass of opinion...
...The Borahs, La Follettes and Norrises cannot be dismissed as evidences of a temporary revolt...
...Readjustments in the Senate can be more adequately understood if regarded as belated expressions of profound political realignments in the Nation...
...they are wise for the Nation Manifestly it is better to have the Re- i publican party strive to digest, these dis-1 concerting hut virile elements than to j run any risk of the country becoming ! further divided along sectional lines by t,he formation qf a Progressive bloc Which would be almost Western party...
...Blocking of the Smoot-Hawlev tariff bill gave conclusive proof of that...
...Morever...
...The new committee assignments merely give recognition to new facts...
...the recent growth of a Young Guard group, who if not insurgent are by no means conservative, has made some shifting of power in Republican Congressional ranks inevitable...
Vol. 1 • January 1930 • No. 8
