The Spirit of '52 - adaption from "The Conservative Revolution: The Movement That Remade America

National Review, April 19, 1999 by Lee Edwards

Yes, Taft lost-but gained something, too.

Mr. Edwards is the author of The Conservative Revolution: The Movement that Remade America (The Free Press), from which this article is adapted.

Principle or popularity? It's a choice political movements always face sooner or later. And it's a choice conservatives are having to make now, as the 2000 presidential race begins. The glittering national ratings of Texas governor George W. Bush have led many conservatives to endorse him; but other conservatives are opting for candidates to whom they are closer philosophically.

It's a tough decision-and one that conservatives have had to make before. In 1952, the contest for the GOP nomination was essentially between Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower and Sen. Robert A. Taft-between eastern liberals and midwestern conservatives, between "modern" Republicans and "regular" ones, between pragmatists eager to win and idealists for whom principle was as important as victory. In the short term, the idealists lost. But by sticking to principle, they managed to advance their cause in the long run.

On Sunday evening, July 6, 1952, the day before the Republican convention opened, Sen. Taft conducted a news conference at the Conrad Hilton Hotel in Chicago. He held high a large bundle of telegrams-530 of them-from delegates pledged to him until hell froze over. "It was perhaps the most impressive display of political strength made by any political leader in American history," wrote Richard Rovere, a liberal journalist. Rovere was not the only one to note the strong emotions that Taft aroused among his delegates, who saw in the Ohio senator not just a candidate but a political savior. Herbert Hoover, the only living Republican ex-president, endorsed Taft warmly, saying, "This convention meets not only to nominate a candidate but to save America." Every Taft delegate believed that in his heart.

Taft seemed certain to win the 604 delegates needed for the nomination. His organization had apparently secured every possible political base, from the platform committee and credentials committee to the convention chairman. But the Eisenhower forces found a chink by challenging accredited delegates from the South, especially in Texas. Two Texas delegations had come to Chicago, one pledged largely to Taft, the other to Eisenhower, with each claiming to be the legitimate representatives of the Lone Star State.

The Eisenhower people denounced what they called "the Texas steal"; in a bit of street theater, masked "bandits" with guns carried placards that read "Taft Steals Votes" while other signs proclaimed that "RAT" stood for "Robert A. Taft." A furious Taft replied that he had never stolen anything in his life and that the delegates had been chosen according to accepted Republican-party procedures of more than 80 years' standing.

Taft was right: The stealing charge was, to use one of Ike's favorite words, tommyrot. But the Eisenhower managers used the GOP's lust for victory and the general's five-star aura to successfully challenge slates in Georgia and Louisiana as well as in Texas. The convention delegates wanted to nominate Taft, but they had also seen polls indicating that Ike would beat any Democrat by a wide margin. Gallup had Eisenhower defeating Gov. Adlai Stevenson of Illinois, the likely Democratic nominee, by 59 to 31 percent. In a similar test between Taft and Stevenson, the latter held a 45-to-44 advantage. Republicans loved Taft, observed one commentator, but they loved victory more.

On the first ballot, the count stood at Eisenhower 595, Taft 500 (30 delegates having apparently noted an early frost in the nether regions), Earl Warren 81, Harold Stassen 20, and another general, Douglas A. MacArthur, 10. There was no second ballot as Minnesota asked to be recognized and changed its vote from Stassen to Eisenhower. Sen. John Bricker, for Taft, and Sen. William Knowland, for Warren, moved that the nomination be made unanimous.

There were plenty of recriminations in Taft's camp. He had been overconfident about the New Hampshire primary, which he lost to Eisenhower. He had not appreciated the significance of the Texas challenge. Taft also carried the burden of being seen as a regional candidate, who lacked substantial support in the populous Pacific coast, let alone the eastern states that still ruled the Republican party. The easterners, led by Gov. Thomas E. Dewey of New York, regarded Taft as an isolationist, a Jeffersonian reactionary, and a probable loser. They wanted to win and believed they would win with the war hero Eisenhower, a strong internationalist who was sympathetic to "modern" Republicanism, with its commitment to efficiently managed government.

Most important, there was no conservative movement that Taft could call on in a time of crisis. In fact, wrote Frank Hanighen in Human Events, the "capitalists" who should have been supporting Taft's ideas were "either stupidly donating money to foundations which oppose his ideas or complacently waiting for his triumph at the polls." Some things never change.