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15 ONE Thirst for Power and Self-Perpetuation, 1944–1946 In late 1944 the Republican Party was in complete disarray. The Grand Old Party, the party of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, lost its way after the stock market crash of 1929 and had yet to recover. Republicans had readily taken credit for the economic policies that had birthed the prosperity of the Roaring Twenties, but doing so gave them ownership of the Great Depression as well. Through the 1930s, as the economy struggled , the Republicans became synonymous with ruin and despair. By 1942 wartime industrial production had revitalized the economy, but despite some gains in Congress, the Republicans remained somewhere between irrelevance and oblivion. The presidential election of 1944 brought the fourth consecutive victory for Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, an extraordinary feat considering that the Democrats had only won four presidential contests during the seventy-two years prior to fdr’s first election in 1932. Roosevelt and his New Deal changed the rules of American politics , expanding the role and responsibility of the federal government and making the political system more responsive to previously marginalized groups such as organized labor and African Americans. The Republicans were essentially caught flat-footed in the face of these sweeping changes. The party lacked effective leadership during this period, unable to mount any opposition as the political landscape shifted dramatically. After the 1944 defeat, the gop appeared destined to remain the minority party for the foreseeable future. Since the founding of the Republic, no party had lost five consecutive presidential elections and survived. Many saw the 1948 election cycle as a must-win contest for the continued existence of the Republican Party. The desperation of late 1944 prompted the Republicans to thoroughly re-examine their position and search for a new political identity, a way to 16 : thirst for power and self-perpetuation package their ideas, principles, and goals to reconnect with the electorate . Out of these discussions, two potential presidential candidates, 1944 nominee and New York governor Thomas E. Dewey and Ohio senator Robert A. Taft, stepped forward to fill the leadership vacuum and quickly became the dominant figures in the party. Both men coveted the 1948 nomination and believed that they could win back the White House. Yet no matter how compelling a candidate or platform is, without the support of the party insiders who determined the presidential ticket, a primary campaign was sure to fail. Therefore, their initial activities were limited to the Republican National Committee. The rnc had strategic importance in 1944 because when a party is out of power, its national committee sets the public message of the organization. If a candidate controlled the rnc, he could shape the national party to best suit his own policy goals and rhetorical style and make his nomination seem almost natural. In an effort to retain Dewey’s power following his presidential defeat, Dewey associate and rnc chairman Herbert Brownell instituted a number of reforms that modernized the party and transformed the national headquarters into an effective publicity, voter mobilization, and policymaking body. Through his combination of bold leadership and moderate rhetoric, Brownell angered Taft and the Old Guard, a group convinced that only their strong opposition to the New Deal would bring victory. The short-term goal of winning in 1948 triggered the factionalism that ultimately shaped the identity of the gop through the end of the twentieth century.1 Factionalism was nothing new for the Republicans. Since the party’s founding in 1854, disputes between the Radical and Presidential Republicans during Reconstruction, the Stalwarts and the Half-Breeds in the 1880s and 1890s, and ex-president Theodore Roosevelt and incumbent William Howard Taft in the 1912 contest made it seem like the Republicans fought themselves more fiercely than they did the Democrats. The 1920s marked a rare decade of calm. While progressives such as Robert La Follette and George Norris remained in the party, their influence waned in the face of pro-business presidents Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover. These three trumpeted variations of a classically liberal platform that contributed to a remarkable rise in industrial production and propelled the Republicans to these successive presidential victories. When the bubble of prosperity burst in 1929, Hoover drew the ire of some in his party for what they deemed an unwise intrusion of the government in the marketplace, but the general public saw him as ineffective and weak. By 1932 the Republican Party was hopelessly linked [18...

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