REPUBLICANS: Fighting Bob

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After South Dakota, Candidate Taft has scheduled only four one-day stands outside Washington, including one in Pennsylvania (where most of the delegates are still uncommitted). There are two good reasons for this light schedule: 1) Taft expects to make five or six major political pronouncements on the floor of the U.S. Senate, the second-best sounding board in the nation (best: the White House); 2) he wants to be mobile, ready to rush in wherever a finger is needed in the delegate dike. The last month is the time for deals—and the Taft men have more experience in this kind of politicking than the Ike supporters. A crucial dealing ground will be the convention credentials committee, which will control the seating of contested delegations. Taft men are now hard at work to get their partisans on that committee.

About two weeks before the convention, Taft may move to a spot near Chicago, to establish his own variety of the meet-the-delegates headquarters Ike will have in Denver's Brown Palace Hotel. Said Taft, doing his own me-tooing: "If Ike has a villa, maybe I'll have one too."

As the race pulls into the homestretch, it is probably the closest in U.S. political history. Taft's strategy was to start early, nail down solid organization support, run hard, never slip behind. The Eisenhower forces' strategy was to base the campaign on Ike's popularity, convince the delegates that they have a winner, overtake Taft, and sweep past him at the finish. So far, the plans of both sides have worked remarkably well. Taft has the lead, but Ike is running faster. A falter now, on either side, might be the margin of defeat.

If defeat comes to Robert Taft at Chicago in July, or at the polls in November, he will not run for the presidency again. But, being Bob Taft, he is not thinking much about that prospect. He is thinking more about whether he will seek re-election as President in 1956.