By Thomas L. Stokes
With Willkie in Wisconsin –
Governor Dewey of New York is very much the man who isn’t here.
Wendell Willkie has him constantly on his mind.
In his campaign here for Wisconsin delegates in the April 4 primary, the 1940 Republican candidate strikes at his rival for the 1944 nomination without naming him, by using him as a symbol of the type of candidate who refuses to discuss the issues as he himself is discussing them in his tour through this state.
Mr. Willkie gets into the subject by listing three categories of Republican candidates.
First, representatives of “narrow nationalism and economic Toryism.” In conversations, he includes Gen. MacArthur, who is entered in the primary, in this category as well as Governor Bricker of Ohio, who is not a candidate here, though he names neither publicly.
Second, those who would avoid the issues and depend upon rallying all sorts of elements to their banners. In this he includes Governor Dewey, who has a nearly complete slate in the primary.
Third, those who believe in international cooperation and an expanding domestic economy that recognizes social advances. In this he includes, principally, Wendell Willkie.
GOP can’t win if–
The Republican Party, he says, cannot possibly win if it nominates anybody in the first two categories.
It cannot help but win, he predicts, if it nominates a representative of the third category – again, Wendell Willkie.
In his calculations, Mr. Willkie is largely overlooking Gen. MacArthur and LtCdr. Harold Stassen, ex-Governor of Minnesota, who is also entered in the primary because he does not think either will cut much of a figure. It would be hard, too, for him to attack LtCdr. Stassen because the latter, his floor manager at Philadelphia in 1940, fits into Mr. Willkie’s own private third category.
Governor Dewey is the man he fears here. Political analysts tell you that this is, basically, a Dewey state, and that if it weren’t for the confusion over whether Governor Dewey is a candidate, he would easily come out on top. Governor Dewey tried to withdraw his delegates on the plea that he isn’t a candidate, but some 16 of them stayed in the race. But people out here take Mr. Dewey more at his word than do more cynical Easterners.
Over and over again
So, Mr. Willkie hammers over and over again on the theme he expressed most succinctly at Oshkosh, in describing the second category:
There is another group of delegates who say they should be elected on the basis of no discussion of the issues at all. They represent the argument that if a man says he is not a candidate, then you can tell the people that you represent all the divergent elements on America. The 1944 convention, them, would be not a convention of principle but merely a political convention, a depending for nomination through cleverness. There must be no hotel-room nomination.
The inference from Mr. Willkie’s discussion of the Republican Party and what it should be and should do is that if does not follow his prescription he cannot go along with it.
Mr. Willkie is glad to have this inference get out and the interpretation that goes along with it, namely, that he might bolt the party and lead a third party or independent movement. But nobody who knows Mr. Willkie well takes any stock in any third party movement. He, himself, has made a careful examination of state laws and discovered that third parties can get on ballots in only a negligible number of states.
His dissent rather would take the form of refusing to support the Republican candidate, perhaps even supporting Mr. Roosevelt.
He is working himself out that far on the limb.
