U.S. At War: Slight Pause for Confusion

After buttonholing plain voters and political dopesters in the South, the Southwest and the Midwest, California's Kyle Palmer, veteran GOPster and political editor of the Republican Los Angeles Times, offered the G.O.P. high command a "simple, sure-fire formula to beat the New Deal." The formula: "Down with the Washington bureaucrats!"

Politico Palmer advised: "No arguments about international relations or obligations, no black eyes and bloodied noses from arguments about isolation; not a single squawk about the dangers of Communism or the menace of the American Fascist. Just 'to hell with bureaucracy and the bureaucrats.' "

Now the G.O.P. did not know what to...