The Pittsburgh Press (September 24, 1946)
Stokes: GOP’s opportunity
By Thomas L. Stokes
WASHINGTON – The yipping chorus of glee from southern Democrats and Republicans that greeted the ouster of Henry Wallace from the Truman Cabinet tells accurately what has happened to the once dynamic party of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
For a long time, even before Mr. Roosevelt passed on, the conservatives had the whip hand in Congress through the coalition of southern Democrats and Republicans that blocked his domestic program in his later years. The coalition continued to operate even more effectively when Harry Truman espoused the Roosevelt program.
Now circumstances have eliminated all vestiges of effective New Deal influence in the top bowers of power around the President. The purging process has been going on a long time. Henry Wallace’s departure puts a period to the shaking-out, and, also, to an era.
The party is sliding back to the state of courteous and comfortable conservatism, so far as its ruling elements go, to which it has returned so often after making itself for a brief time the vehicle of revolt among the plain people. Back to the state where it can still make noises, but not win elections. Back to the state where it plays its tweedledee to the Republican tweedledum as Mr. Roosevelt once put it so aptly.
People tired of restrictions
As any student of politics knows, the Democratic Party does not win elections as the party of conservatism. If the country wants conservatism it goes Republican to be certain about it.
It is possible to suggest an analysis of what is going on in the country without a first-hand inquiry which this writer is planning to make soon on a tour of the country.
The public mind is confused, and naturally after a great war. The problems of peace are many. People are tired of government restrictions. They can’t buy what they want, and the price of what they can get is often beyond all reason. They look to Washington for solutions only to find a floundering administration, unable to give positive answers. All this disturbs them and leads them to look elsewhere for leadership.
This is a natural and primary advantage to the Republicans. For campaign purposes Republicans have dug up an old bogy that always seems to terrify, that is, except in depression years. That is “Communism.” It’s a good whipping boy, particularly now when many people have more than they ever had before. Republicans tie it up with the administration, helped along by the presence of Communists in liberal organizations, in a few labor unions, and by Russia’s tactics in Europe.
The liberal wing of the Democratic Party is in a state of shellshock over all this, and seems to lack either courage or a positive program. It sits and stews. It lost its leader and now it has lost its last direct contact with the administration.
Prospects of third-party dim
There is talk of a third party, but the liberal groups seem too disorganized for any such effort. Furthermore men regard such a solution as a will o’ the wisp. They know what Wendell L. Willkie discovered when he was contemplating a bolt. That is that leaders of both major parties in the states have been most careful to revise election statutes to make it difficult for a third party since the Teddy Roosevelt Bull Moose adventure in 1912 and the LaFollette independent movement in 1924.
The danger out of the present confusion is that Old Guard Republicans will hear from it a call to them, and act accordingly. That is certainly a delusion. The times demand continued progressivism, and that the people still want to move forward is evidenced by the way so many of them, in the polls, still cling to all they can get – which is the milk-and-water, highly diluted progressivism to which the Truman administration gives lip service.
This is, rather, an opportunity for solid, continuing progressivism. Some Republican leaders sense that. There is a historical precedent for such leadership in Teddy Roosevelt. It will be too bad if Republicans don’t recognize their responsibility along with their opportunity. They have a splendid chance – if they will take it.