Helen Gahagan accuses GOP of doubletalk
Says Democrats are conservative party
Chicago, Illinois (UP) –
Mrs. Helen Gahagan Douglas, national committeewoman from California, said last night in an address to the Democratic Convention that the Democratic Party is “the true conservative party” and the Republican leaders “are the dreamers.”
Mrs. Douglas, actress wife of movie actor Melvin Douglas, accused the Republicans of “doubletalk” and said the Democratic Party had conserved hope and ambition “in the hearts of our people.”
She said:
We have conserved the skills of their hands. We have husbanded our national resources. We have saved millions of homes and farms from foreclosure and conserved the family stake and democracy.
Conserve faith in government
We have rescued banks and trust companies, insured crops and people’s savings. We have built schools. We have checked the flooding rivers and turned them into power.
We have replanted the forest, re-fertilize the soil. Ours is the conservative party. We have conserved the people’s faith in a people’s government – a democracy.
‘GOP leaders are dreamers’
Mrs. Douglas said that because they are the conservative party, the Democrats reject “the hazy Republican dream” that the nation can get along “with its government dismantled, its housing programs destroyed, its wage and price controls thrown out the window.”
“The Republican leaders are the dreamers,” she said. “They have no contact with the people or with the realities of their wants and needs.”
Mrs. Douglas said the Republican program is a dream, “a nightmare of muddle and confusion.” She said there are not enough Democrats to elect a President, nor enough Republicans.
Best friend of GOP
She said:
Franklin Delano Roosevelt has been elected President for three successive terms – and each time the Republicans have helped put him into office.
The last three elections have shown that the Democratic Party has been the best friend the Republican rank-and-file voter has ever had: He knows it, and he has voted accordingly.
‘It’s doubletalk’
Criticizing the Republican presidential nominee, New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey, and the Republican platform, Mrs. Douglas said:
The Republican candidate has pledged himself to carry to Japan a defeat so crushing and complete that every last man among them will know that he has been beaten.
And at the same time, the Republican platform does not indicate by a single line – or a single word that there is any need for further sacrifice. That is doubletalk.
The Republican Party has pledged itself to reduce taxes to the normal expenditures of the government as soon as the war ends, and also has pledged itself to reduce the national debt. It has not explained how taxes and debts can be so reduced at the same time. That is doubletalk.
The Republican Party declares that it is the party of the Constitution, but its nominee declares that he will not participate in the active management of the war.
Argument called inept
This thoughtless and inept argument ignores the fact that our Founding Fathers carefully provided for civilian control of the military as the only possible safeguard of democratic life. The Constitution gave the people the right to elect a civilian Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.
Yet the Republican nominee runs for the office of Commander-in-Chief on the solemn pledge that, if elected, he will not fulfill his duties. That is doubletalk.