REPUBLICANS: Fighting Bob

• Share

(6 of 7)

Taft's long fight for the nomination has won votes—but it has also lost votes. An aggressive and "tireless campaigner is not necessarily an effective one. On TV panel programs, "Fighting Bob" sometimes gives the unfortunate impression that he wants to fight everybody about everything. In private, personal fact, Taft is not overaggressive or arrogant. He comes over that way as a result of breaking down his natural reserve to build up the "Fighting Bob" picture.

When Taft's Republican opponents get down to cases on why they think he can't beat a Democrat, they point to 1) labor opposition, and 2) foreign policy. The first is less important: 75% of the votes that labor leaders can swing against Taft can probably also be swung against Ike—or against any other Republican. The foreign-policy issue is more damaging. Taft is by no means an isolationist. His record indicates that, if he were President, he would try, in his own way, to build up the free world's cooperative strength against Communism. His views on the necessity of a stronger Air Force and the Navy emphasize this position. But his political opposition to Truman has led him into some extreme and sometimes puzzling statements. One day he called for a stronger front in Asia; on the next for a cut in military expenditures. The two positions are not necessarily inconsistent, but they sound inconsistent—and Fighting Bob does not pause to reconcile them in the minds of voters.

Toward the independent voters—who, after all, make up 28% of the U.S. electorate—Taft takes a rather high & mighty line. Says Taft: "We cannot afford to modify our principles to secure the support of a limited number of mugwumps, who never have and never will believe in Republican principles . . . We can only win by the earnest support of a carefully worked-out organization, to interest and bring to the polls millions of voters who have thought little about the vital nature of this political campaign . . . I promise you an all-out fighting campaign . . ." Independent voters do not like to be typed as second-class citizens, even once in four years.

Just Two Senators. When Ike lands in the U.S., only five weeks will be left to fight it out. The campaign will increase in intensity and bitterness. Taft men will raise louder cries against Ike, demanding to know where he stands on specific issues, questioning whether he is really a Republican, asking if he will conduct a fighting campaign against the Democrats, echoing Taft man MacArthur's sacrificial statement that no soldier should be President. (The Ike men have developed a quick answer: look at the last two Senators who have become Presidents: Warren G. Harding and Harry S. Truman.)