NEW DEAL LABELED ‘FASCISM’ BY MARTIN
Tells convention people must give Republicans more help in fight on regimentation
To ‘free Democrats, too; House leader denies charge his party has no program, lists its main points
By James B. Reston
Chicago, Illinois – (June 27)
The Republican Party is fighting the arrogant and bureaucratic dictatorship which is leading the people to national bankruptcy and complete regimentation, but the Republicans must have more help from the people if they are to hold the lines of constitutional government, Joseph W. Martin Jr., House Minority Leader, told the Republican National Convention today.
Mr. Martin, who was elected permanent chairman of the convention, emphasized that the Republicans had a constructive policy, based on the Constitution, private enterprise and collaboration with the other countries of the world, to lead the United States back to a “sound, prosperous peacetime basis.”
He said:
We are in more than one war. In one of those wars, our sons and daughters are against the German and the Jap. But there is another war here at home. It is a war between two eternally hostile ideologies. One idea is that of a free society – the society of free men creating their wealth with the instrumentalities of free enterprise under the protection of a representative republic.
The other is the conception of the regimented and planned society living upon vast streams of government debt and taking its shape and destiny from the directives from a bureaucratic elite under the command of a self-inspired leader. You may call it anything you wish. In Europe, they call it Fascism. Here we call it the New Deal.
Fight to ‘free’ Democrats
Mr. Martin sought to distinguish between the New Deal and the Democratic Party.
Mr. Martin said:
The Democratic Party which we have known and with which we have honorably struggled on so many fields. But which was a party of Americans, who believed in the American system, has lost its own powers over its own destiny. The Democratic Party has been captured by a minority, whose philosophy it despises. It has become a prisoner of the New Deal.
Thank God some of its leaders realize this and have had the courage to revolt. This election, curiously, is not merely a fight to put the Republicans into office, but, by a strange twist of fate, it is also a fight to emancipate the Democrats.
After repeating the policy of the Republican Party as defined by the Republican members of Congress in September 1942, Mr. Martin said that whenever criticism was leveled at the New Deal administration, the reply invariably was that the Republicans had no program. He insisted that the Republicans had carefully thought out what they would do when they were elected, and this program could be summed up in part by the following points. The Republicans would, he said:
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Restore to Congress its responsibility and function as the people’s special instrument of control over their government and their public officials.
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Restore responsibilities in matters of local concern to the state and local governmental subdivisions.
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Produce “genuine economy” in government. Mr. Martin said:
To achieve that we will eliminate administrative non-essentials. No one can pretend that under the New Deal there will ever be retrenchment in governmental costs. The New Dealers just don’t believe in it.
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Establish a taxation system that would not only be as simple and equitable as possible but a system designed to “stimulate industry and create jobs for the people,” a system of taxation “on a revenue basis and not for punitive purposes.”
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Under a Republican administration, “labor will retain all the essential rights and just privileges it has gained.”
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Make it possible for private capital to be permitted and encouraged to venture in the post-war period into renewed and expanded production.
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Continue humane and beneficial economic and social advantages.
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Provide “adequate benefits” for the men and women of our military services and make certain they are promptly available.
The House leader indicated that the Republicans would attempt to make the Communists’ support for a “fourth term” an issue in the presidential election. The “coalition” of the Communists with the CIO Political Action Committee in favor of another term for Mr. Roosevelt was, Mr. Martin said, “an insolent challenge” to the people of the United States.
He said:
This challenge has been insolently and boldly issued to the people of America. It presents a vital issue of this campaign.