REPUBLICANS: Fighting Bob

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On a grey, soggy Midwestern morning last week, a blue & white Jackrabbit bus pulled up in front of the high school in Canton, S. Dak. (pop. 2,500). It was 9:30 a.m., an early hour for a political rally even in this year of virulent campaign fever, but already 500 people were squeezed into the school auditorium. The candidate they were waiting for, a tall man who showed his 62 sedentary years but had a determined look, slipped off the bus with amazing agility. In the bus he left a bulging, battered, yellow leather briefcase with a gold-lettered name almost erased by the wear & tear of political travel. Everyone knew the name: Robert A. Taft.

Bob Taft, who has campaigned harder and longer than any man who ever sought a presidential nomination, was beginning his last primary battle of 1952. For five days after his arrival in Canton, he stormed across more than 1,000 miles of South Dakota's rolling plains, Dantesque bad lands and towering Black Hills. He made 24 speeches to 50,000 attentive South Dakotans; almost every hall he entered was jam-full. In a flat Ohio voice he said the kind of things most Midwestern Republicans hoped to hear. He said he was against universal military training, high taxes and expensive foreign aid; he was for farm-price supports, flood control and Douglas MacArthur. He made a big vow: "I promise you that if I am nominated and elected . . . I will reduce taxes by at least 15% within one year of the time I have been in office."

Meantime, in the enemy camp, the activity was almost as furious. Eisenhower clubs had been organized in all but half a dozen of South Dakota's 68 counties, and a first-string squad was coming in to speak for Ike. Among them were Senators Jim Duff of Pennsylvania and Fred Seaton of Nebraska, Governors Dan Thornton of Colorado, Val Peterson of Nebraska and Sherman Adams of New Hampshire, Representatives Walter Judd of Minnesota and Clifford Hope of Kansas. The Ike big guns would fire their heaviest volleys after Taft left the state this week.

With the two candidates for the Republican nomination only a hot breath apart, South Dakota's primary is indeed important—more important than the 14 delegates involved. The June 3 primary, in which more than 100,000 votes are expected, will be the last Eisenhower-Taft test before the Republicans gather in Chicago on July 7. The aftertaste of South Dakota might affect the first mouth-waterings in Chicago.

In this final primary, Candidate Taft is on a hotter spot than Candidate Eisenhower. For here, in Taft's Midwest heartland, Taft should win. A defeat in South Dakota would be a blow to Taft.