Arizona republican., 1912-08-29
Explanation of a Theft

Explanation of a Theft The explanation by a thief of a theft. unless it be in the way of a confession is necessarily embarrassing and is never attempted by a wise thief Marshal Stimson. one of the progressive leaders of California, is not a wise one, for in a long article in the Los Angeles Express he at tempts to justify the seizure of the republican machinery of that state by the progressives, an act including the further crime of perjury on the part of all the progressive candidates. MT. Stimson's explanation is not an eX- pIanation at all but a series of startling and incoherent propositions, one of which is:
 There is no national republican party. considered solely as such. The national republican party, so-called, is made up of different units of such state organizations as affiliate with it."
 Thus We have it: There is now no national republican party. the Cali fornia section of it having withdrawn What was stolen was therefore a non existent thing; hence there was no theft at all; one cannot steal nothing Here. MT. Stimson tells us why the national republican party ceased to exist:
 The national organization in declin- ing to recognize California's delegation as it was chosen by the voters of the state under the laws of the state left the state organization free to affiliate with whatever party was most nearly in accord win the principles that had been declared for by the members of the party in the state"
 The matter referred to by MT. Stim- son. the national committees disre- gard of the California law regarding the selection of delegates to the na- tional convention has already been pretty well threshed out. The Cali fornia law, though permitting the election of delegates by districts pro- vides that the delegates in any district of the majority faction in the state should be declared elected, thus doing away with the election of delegates by districts and restoring the old unit rule which was abrogated by the national convention of 1880 and which has never since prevailed in a republican convention If New York had had such a rule as California tried to es- tablish Col. Roosevelt would have been deprived of fourteen delegates from that state and if Massachusetts had had such rule, it would have cost MT. P .oseveIt nineteen delegates from that state
 For thirty years, the congressional district had been the unit and the national committee before the passage of the California law had issued it's call providing for the selection of dele gates by districts.
 We may quote here from the recent statement of Chairman Hilles which makes this m1ttcr perfectly clear:
 "The republican party is a voluntary organization and it is elementary law that every voluntary organization, whether, religious, social. scientific or political has the right to fix the basis of membership in it's own conventions and is the final judge of membership therein. state may well prescribe that primaries and caucuses shall be held in an orderly manner and that the votes shall be correctly counted and returned and may furnish to po- litical parties the machinery for ac- curately reporting these results. But tempt to vary the basis of representa- tion in party conventions. It cannot for instance, prescribe that delegates to a given convention shall be elected by the legislature or appointed by the governor or determine that the repre- sentation shall be by county, state or senatorial districts. The apportion- ment must be made as it always has been done, by the national convention of the party and by its agent, the na- tional committee"
 The national committee could thus properly have thrown out every Cali fornia delegate but it did not do SC for all the other progressive delegates except the two contestants represented the will of the majority in their sev- eral delegate districts.