The Roots of Modern Conservatism: Dewey, Taft, and the Battle for the Soul of the Republican Party

FIVE. The Great Republican Mystery, 1951–1952

109 The 1950 election results did nothing to quell Republican factionalism as both Taft and Dewey saw the outcomes as further justification for their electoral strategies. As the gop made preparations for the 1952 presidential campaign, the national political climate remained fairly static. The Korean conflict continued in stalemate, while McCarthy’s crusade grew more aggressive and maintained high levels of public support. The economic picture looked to be one of ever-increasing prosperity with inflation weighing lightly on the minds of the voters. Inside the Republican organization, however, the mood transformed dramatically with rumors that General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the architect of D-Day, would seek the nomination. “Ike” regularly voted as a Republican, but since military code prevented him from making public political statements while on active duty, his party affiliation was largely unknown. After his defeat in 1948, Dewey still believed in his moderate Republican program but saw Eisenhower, a highly desirable, extremely electable nominee, as the most viable person to end the nearly two decades of Democratic dominance. The Dewey faction courted Ike and, in 1951, organized a preconvention campaign for him based on his sterling reputation, past heroics, and enormous popularity. Taft, operating on the assumption that 1952 was his year to head the ticket, prepared to re-create his 1950 Ohio campaign methods and rally those loosely identified as conservatives against the Truman administration. Though Eisenhower’s presence finally broke the balance of power between Taft and Dewey, the 1952 campaign solidified the factional identities as liberal and conservative and further alienated the strong conservatives in the gop. In November 1950 the Republican Party remained an amalgamation of disgruntled personalities. Although most party elites were center-right FI VE The Great Republican Mystery, 1951–1952 110 : the great republican mystery on the political spectrum, publicly the party seemed torn between selfidenti fied conservatives and liberals. Even as their differences in policy remained minor, the two factions repeatedly couched their opposition to each other in ideological terms. The strong conservatives who generally backed McCarthyism and believed Taft and the Old Guard were too willing to compromise with liberals complicated the picture somewhat. Just after the 1950 elections, St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Marquis Childs reported that Taft and Dewey still had the most power, but party insiders committed to McCarthy were gaining momentum and challenging their dominance. Childs referred to the McCarthyites as “extremists who would take the party not merely into isolation but into a kind of reaction that would seem to have as its end product the garrison or, perhaps more accurately , the stockade state.” Childs speculated that McCarthy associates such as Indiana senators Homer Capehart and Edward Jenner and Kansas senator Andrew Schoeppel could oppose Taft’s leadership in the upper house. With Arthur Summerfield and Thomas Coleman still stumping for McCarthy in party circles, Childs’s forecast of a tri-factional dispute for the 1952 nomination seemed at least plausible to some. In actuality, Childs had overstated his case, and McCarthy and his associates never threatened either faction’s power within the party structure and rarely had any bearing on their calculations. Their presence forced Taft to deal with a burgeoning conservative movement at the grass roots, but the McCarthyites never came close to eclipsing either of the two factions inside the party hierarchy.1 Generally each presidential election cycle opens after the midterm contests with a shadow campaign where potential nominees and their advisors approach key party leaders and financers to gauge support and start building their organizations. Despite the best efforts of the Taftites, even after Dewey’s 1948 loss, his organization had stayed intact and his financial backers remained committed to his leadership. Before 1948, no Republican had ever been renominated after an unsuccessful presidential run, and it would be impossible for Dewey to be the standard-bearer again in 1952, especially after the fallout on the rnc after the defeat. He looked to remain an authoritative voice in the party while supporting a candidate who carried on his “forward-looking” campaign strategy. Finding the right person was difficult, though, because the Dewey organization ’s main selling point to Republican insiders was Dewey the candidate, not his liberal identification or his moderate platform.2 In 1944 and 1948 Brownell assembled a national organization of individuals who were com- the great republican mystery : 111 mitted to Dewey because...