Chicago Tribune stirs up the voters against Willkie
By Louther S. Horne
Chicago, Illinois – (March 25)
Citizens of the Central states became increasingly aware this week that Col. Robert R. McCormick and his Chicago Tribune, pre-war non-interventionists and harsh critics of the Roosevelt administration, are factors to be reckoned with both in the selection of a Republican presidential nominee here in June and in the fall campaign to determine the next White House occupant.
This belief has long been prevalent throughout Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin, Tribune circulation territory. Here, large numbers of people either praise or denounce The Tribune’s editorial criticism of the war strategy, its tirades against the administration’s domestic and international policies, the Communists, “global planners” and bureaucrats.
Among this segment of public opinion, the Chicago publisher and his paper loomed larger than ever as political influences after Wendell Willkie, speaking in Wisconsin, “read” Col. McCormick out of the Republican Party, a step the colonel had taken against the party’s 1940 candidate some months ago.
Certain defeat and the re-election of President Roosevelt, Mr. Willkie predicted, face the Republicans if the “taint” of The Tribune’s editorial “preachments” of “narrow nationalism and economic Toryism” is imposed upon the party’s nominee and platform. The people, he said, do not want the leadership “of the Col. McCormick.”
This challenge to the colonel and The Tribune from “the barefoot boy from Wall Street,” as the paper terms Mr. Willkie met a quick retort. Asserting that “Willkie is not so stupid as to think he has a chance of getting the Republican nomination,” The Tribune asked, “What game is Willkie up to?”
Col. McCormick, who refused to have his name placed in the Illinois preferential primary by the Republican Nationalist Revival Committee, an isolationist group, favors Gen. MacArthur as the Republican nominee. If Governor Dewey is picked, The Tribune undoubtedly will support him in the election.
But if Willkie is the choice, what will The Tribune do? That is a question often asked.