The Evening Star (October 24, 1946)
GOP victory is seen as gain for Byrnes
By the Associated Press
Sen. Brewster (R-Maine) said last night a Republican election victory “will mean a victory for the bipartisan foreign policy of Secretary of State Byrnes and Sen. Vandenberg.”
“What a Democratic victory would mean, nobody knows,” he added.
Replying, Sen. Lucas (D-Illinois) said a Republican victory “would mean a drift back toward isolationism.”
Sens. Brewster and Lucas, chairmen, respectively, of the Republican and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committees, were interviewed in a transcribed radio broadcast by Selden Menefee, executive director of Public Service Transcriptions, Inc.
Sen. Lucas said the Republicans in the East “on the whole approved our foreign policy, but certainly Sen. Brewster would not contend that many Republicans in the Midwest, outside of Sen. Vandenberg, have wholeheartedly supported this program.”
“In view of their record before Pearl Harbor, and since Pearl Harbor, and in view of what Mr. Taft said about the Nuernberg trials,” Sen. Lucas continued, “there is a drift in the Midwest directly back to isolationism and against the present foreign policy. We Democrats have presented a pretty solid front on this foreign issue.”
“I’m afraid I must dispute that, Sen. Lucas,” Sen. Brewster retorted. “There is Henry Wallace – remember him? – and his followers. And there are the isolationists such as Sens. Wheeler of Montana and Johnson of Colorado. These people are hardly ‘solid’.”