DEMOCRATS: New Line

After fried chicken and apple pie at a Democratic unity dinner in Jackson, Miss. last week, Senate Minority Leader Lyndon Johnson rolled out a surprising new party line. Its essence: Dwight Eisenhower is a great & good man, and it is up to the Democratic Party to save him from the Republicans.

Old Guard Republicans, said Texas' Johnson, are frustrating and obstructing the President: "The President asked Congress for a one-year extension of the reciprocal trade agreements . . . The Republicans looked at each other in embarrassed silence . . . Maybe we can find a few Republicans willing to go along with their President and get it passed . . . He has asked for steps to strengthen our allies in the battle against Communism. The Old Guard Republicans reply that they cannot go along. Only the Democrats can save this program. He has asked for steps to strengthen our fiscal position. A Republican chairman is ready to bottle his request in a House committee. Only the Democrats can save his program."

Then the minority leader got to the point he had been working up to: "The American people elected President Eisenhower to preserve the strength, the prosperity, and the freedom of America. That platform will be realized only if they give him a Democratic Congress in 1954 . . . We shall not permit the Republican Old Guard to use the President's prestige as a shield behind which they will tear down the liberty and prosperity our people have built. Nor do we believe that the President wants his prestige used for such a purpose."

Himself an ardent admirer of Ike Eisenhower, Texan Johnson obviously was trying to use the President's great popularity to build up the strength of the Democratic Party. In Mississippi, where the party has been badly split (in 1948 the state went Dixiecrat; in 1952 Ike got 39% of the vote, the best any Republican has done since reconstruction days), Johnson's new line was exactly what the Democrats wanted to hear. They cheered him lustily, and held long huddles with Steve Mitchell, the first Democratic national chairman who ever worked at his job in Mississippi.

When the love feast was over, Democratic State Chairman Thomas Jefferson Tubb seemed to think that Johnson and Mitchell had served just the right political victuals. Roared Tubb: "Those who say the Democratic Party in Mississippi is no more, let them listen and let them quiver."

This week the Democratic National Committee announced a new venture which has no precedent in national politics. Beginning in July, the committee will publish (at 25¢ a copy, $3 a year) a pocket-size monthly magazine to be called the Democratic Digest. Its contents will be one-third original writing and two-thirds condensation of material from other publications. Its objective: to present the Democratic Party's point of view in an effort to counteract what Fair Dealing columnists and commentators love to call "the one party," i.e., pro-Republican press. Party leaders hope to sell the Digest to Democrats, independents, progressives, and maybe even to some Republicans.