Stokes: Dewey’s challenge
By Thomas L. Stokes
Washington –
Governor Dewey seemed to be talking very much like a candidate when he went out of his way to denounce the administration and its proposals for a federal ballot for soldiers in his message to the New York Legislature outlining a plan for state ballots.
He backed up the “states’ rights” position of a majority of his party in Congress and of Southern Democrats against that of President Roosevelt and, incidentally, of Wendell L. Willkie.
What cheered Republicans most was the Governor’s vigorous language when he swapped epithets with President Roosevelt, the old epithet master. Governor Dewey called the federal ballot “a blank piece of paper,” as against the term “fraud” which Mr. Roosevelt applied to the original state ballot bill.
Republicans have been looking for somebody who could “tell” President Roosevelt.
Welcomed as GOP champion
They were glad to have their position justified by the Governor because he is now the man voted in the polls as the most likely to succeed as candidate at the Chicago convention in June.
It is no secret here that Republicans moved rather hesitantly and nervously to their strong “states’ rights” position on the soldier vote issue. They now await President Roosevelt’s next move. They do not expect him to drop it; certainly not since Governor Dewey has chosen to challenge him.
The more comfortable feeling of Republicans over the soldier vote issue, should be linked up to other events on the political front, for example, the Republican victory in a Denver Congressional district that had been Democratic for 14 years, another in a chain of byelection successes.
They are beginning to feel so good about these developments that they are worrying less about individual issues, observing signs of a strong trend reflecting dissatisfaction with the administration.
Denver victory encouraging
Perhaps the most cheerful aspect of the Denver victory was that Democrats could not check the Republican tide even with a famous war hero. An inclination to throw war heroes into the breach seems to be a part of Democratic strategy in this tough year. The result in Denver was encouraging to members of Congress who have been quaking in their boots about war veteran opponents and who, to offset it, have been rushing forward with bounteous legislative offerings for the benefit of veterans.
The Republican trend inures to Governor Dewey’s benefit as it does to that of his party. It makes the Republican nomination more of a prize than it appeared some months ago when he announced he was not a candidate, which accounts for the willingness of a Governor now, so it is made known, to accept a convention “draft.”
Everybody knows he is a “candidate” in this sense.
His gratuitous intervention in the soldier vote issue gives the appearance that he is talking like a candidate. Does this mean that, henceforth, he will seize the occasion to discuss the issues?
He is getting demands that he make his position plain on all the issues on the ground that he owes it to his party since he seems headed for the nomination.