Anti-New Deal Democrats can’t decide on strategy
Program to block fourth term is developing along two different and almost opposite lines
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer
Washington (UP) –
Anti-New Deal Democrats appear today unable to make up their minds on strategy to prevent President Roosevelt’s renomination for a fourth term.
The belief that he will seek renomination is sufficiently indicated by the organization of pre-convention machinery to block him. But the program is developing along two different and almost opposing lines.
Former Secretary of War Harry H. Woodring, who left the Roosevelt Cabinet in 1940, is promoting a “third party” movement or general conservative Democratic bolt of Mr. Roosevelt’s candidacy, should he be renominated.
Indicates plan solidly founded
To this end, Mr. Woodring helped set up a Jeffersonian Democratic Conference which met last month in Chicago. After conferences last week in New York, he indicated that the third-party plan was solidly founded and that there were half a dozen or so Democrats who would be available to contest the presidential election as a Jeffersonian Democrat.
It is obvious that any Jeffersonian-Democratic presidential candidate who could take 100 or so electoral votes from Mr. Roosevelt next November would have obtained his defeat if the election were at all close.
Mentioned by Mr. Woodring as potential candidates are former Democratic National Committee Chairman James A. Farley, Senator Harry F. Byrd and former Massachusetts Governor Joseph B. Ely. Inclusion of these men among potential third-party candidates appears to shadow the whole program. Mr. Farley has told intimates that he would not bolt the Democratic Party even if Mr. Roosevelt were renominated.
Ely in different position
Mr. Byrd has already announced that he is not a candidate for the presidential nomination. Mr. Ely is in a somewhat different position. Moving boldly in Massachusetts against a fourth term, anti-New Deal Democrats have entered a slate of convention delegate candidates who would be pledged to Mr. Ely’s nomination for the Presidency. That was announced Feb. 20. It looked like a bolt or third-party threat.
But it appears now that Mr. Ely will not permit his name to go before presidential preference primaries in other states. therefore, the strategy in Massachusetts seems to coincide less with Mr. Woodring’s third-party plan than with the effort of other anti-New Dealers to obtain control of a big block of convention delegates for a convention floor fight against Mr. Roosevelt’s renomination and a do-or-die effort to prevent a New Dealer being nominated for Vice President in the event Mr. Roosevelt heads the ticket again.
Many Democrats, especially Southerners, who might be willing to fight Mr. Roosevelt’s renomination in the convention would not bolt the party to vote against him.
A leader of the Stop-Roosevelt group believes that there is some hope of preventing the President’s renomination by the strategy of preventing his supporters from lining up solid blocks of Roosevelt-instructed delegates and defeating him on the convention floor. He estimated that eight and possibly nine Southern states would send uninstructed delegations to the Democratic convention.
It is on that strategy of uninstructed or favorite-son candidates that non-bolting anti-New Dealers are relying. If they can’t lick Mr. Roosevelt in the convention, they will probably not vote against him.
Bricker: Local government No. 1 issue
Jacksonville, Florida (UP) –
Governor John Bricker of Ohio, candidate for the Republican nomination for President, said today that the big issue in the 1944 presidential election was whether local self-government shall prevail or “shall we continue the trend toward central autocratic control by the federal government.”
In Jacksonville to address the Florida State Republican Convention, he advocated simplification of the tax laws and a reduction in taxes.
Governor Bricker said that we must reduce the national debt. He said reduction of the national debt could start now with the elimination of needless boards and bureaucrats and that reduction in the federal payroll would not hurt the prosecution of the war but would help it.
Governor Bricker added:
Congress long ago should have provided laws to prohibit strikes during wartime. Congress should have provided a board before which misunderstandings could be adjudicated with fairness to both sides.
Advocating limitation upon presidential tenure, Governor Bricker said:
…continued occupancy of the highest seat in the land is a powerful weapon in the hands of the “ins” because of the desire of federal employees to hold their jobs and increase their authority.