On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 15:56:50 -0500 (EST) Michael Pollak
<mpollak at panix.com> writes:
>
> > The "Old Guard" was never able to get the nomination for one of
> > their own.
>
> You forget Nixon, their party leader after Taft's death. And you
> forget
> their nomination of Goldwater. And you forget the 20s.
I wasn't talking about the '20s which preceded FDR and the New Deal, nor was I referring to Goldwater but the period in between, from 1940 to 1960. During that time, the "old guard" was not able to win the Republican nomination for one of its own people.
>
> You are in fact extrapolating solely from the FDR years, where the
> real
> problem was that that Taft, their leader, couldn't win the general
> election
> -- he was extremely uncharismatic -- and refused to accept that
Was Harry Truman all that charismatic? I really don't think so. I suspect that the problem laid with his not supporting the new foreign policy that was emerging after WW II. His brand of isolationism was rejected by the ruling class.
> fact, which
> every practical minded Republican could see. This kept any other
> old
> guardist from getting the nomination instead of him, and Repugs of
> any
> stripe who wanted to win didn't want him. When he died in 1953, the
> Old
> Guard went back to nominating presidents the moment Ike was out of
> the way.
>
> Ironically, had Eisenhower not been parachutted in at the last
> minute, there
> is no doubt that Taft would have won the nomination in 1952;
And that raises the question as to why Eisenhower was parachuted in and how he was able to grab the nomination when it seemed it would go to Taft. That suggests to me that the people who really controlled the GOP were not keen on having Taft as the nominee, hence, Eisenhower.
> he had
> the
> nominees so completely sewn up that Ike's gang had to jury-rig the
> rules to
> free some up. Taft's certain nomination is in fact a large reason
> why Ike
> accepted. He thought Taft was the only person in the country who
> could lose
> to Truman. He thought it would destroy the Republican party. And
> that
> Truman would destroy the economy with his profligacy.
>
> And when Ike was president, the old guard which got a majority in
> the Senate
> on his coattails immediately set out to completely overthrow his
> foreign
> policy with the Bricker Amendment. It would not only have taken us
> out of
> Nato, it would have made the treaty that founded it unconstitutional
> and
> virtually impossible to make again. And Ike couldn't stop them.
> The only
> thing that saved Ike was triangulating with the Dems. (And it still
> only
> missed passage at the last minute by one vote.) Ike was very much
> in
> control of the government, but not at all of his party.
>
> Michael
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
________________________________________________________________ Juno Platinum $9.95. Juno SpeedBand $14.95. Sign up for Juno Today at http://www.juno.com! Look for special offers at Best Buy stores.