Going into the 1952 Republican presidential primaries, the two major contenders for the Republican presidential nomination were General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio. Governor Earl Warren of California and former Governor Harold Stassen of Minnesota also sought the nomination. Taft led the conservative wing of the party, which rejected many of the New Deal social welfare programs created in the 1930s and supported a noninterventionist foreign policy. Taft had been a candidate for the Republican nomination twice before but had been defeated both times by moderate Republicans from New York: Wendell Willkie in 1940 and Thomas E. Dewey in 1948.