Editorial: The party line
Earl Browder, America’s No. 1 Communist, is urging the Republican and Democratic parties to “explore the possibility” of a single presidential candidate in 1944.
Mr. Browder says thus “unprecedented measure” should be taken to “meet an unprecedented emergency.”
Being unlike any other, this war, of course, is posing unprecedented problems for Americans which they are meeting with unprecedented measures.
But even these unprecedented measures must lie within the basic framework of democracy or we should be guilty of scuttling the very thing we fight to preserve.
There is never – and can never be – such an unprecedented emergency that the people of a democracy must yield the fundamental right to choose their representative and, above all, their chief representative – the President.
Whether Mr. Roosevelt is to receive a fourth term, or whether some Republican or some other Democrat is to be entrusted with the Presidency, is for the people to decide.
An election campaign which would present but one candidate to the people would be a denial of the democratic concept of freedom of choice.
It would, in fact, constitute a scrapping of democracy for the “one-party line” of the Communists.
Editorial: An insult to whom?
Senator Taft calls President Roosevelt’s soldier-vote message an “insult to Congress.”
Maybe so. But what would you call Congress’ mismanagement of this issue?
It will be an insult, and more, to the Armed Forces if they are deprived in the least degree of an opportunity to vote.