The Pittsburgh Press (October 27, 1944)
Bricker: Farmers for GOP
Foreign relations speech set for tonight
Wichita, Kansas (UP) –
Ohio Governor John W. Bricker today said flatly that farmers, knowing themselves to be victims of “New Deal incompetence and bureaucratic arrogance,” will vote Republican in the national election a week from next Tuesday.
Tonight, the GOP vice-presidential nominee will turn the Republican spotlight of criticism on President Roosevelt’s record on foreign relations and national defense in a speech at Kansas City
KDKA will broadcast the speech at 10:30 p.m. EWT.
‘Victim of incompetence’
In a speech prepared for delivery here today, Mr. Bricker said:
The American farmer knows that during this war he has been a victim of New Deal incompetence and bureaucratic arrogance.
Declaring that farmers had established new production records “in spite of the New Deal,” the nominee said weather and fluctuating market prices were “bad enough” farm problems.
He continued:
But when the farmer is faced with the added uncertainties of government control of his prices, labor, machinery, transportation, and by policy shifts in the middle of the crop year, he winds up in a state of utter confusion.
‘Arbitrary control’
Mr. Bricker said it was because of “this arbitrary control” that the farmer “has turned against the New Deal.”
“He does not like it and he is going to vote against it on Nov. 7,” he said.
Last night, Mr. Bricker said at Enid, Oklahoma, that if the New Deal wanted to continue its wartime control grasp over the personal lives of American citizens, it would twist the language of laws with the help of its “New Deal Attorney General and Supreme Court.”