Bismarck daily tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1881-1916, 1912-04-17
TAFT Managers
SURE OF VICTORY
Declare President will Have
569 Votes on First Ballot
in Convention

w Ao1lNI lON, April ILL., ue
Roosevelt victory in Pennsylvania, fol-
lowing his victory earlier in the week
in Illinois, has drawn the lines tighter
in the contest between the president
and the former president. Roosevelt
now belives that he will be able to
win away from Taft some OF the lat
ter's support in the south, and he
will make stumping tour in that
section as soon as ne gets through
with his trip to the middle west. The
Taft people, however, insist that Taft
will be nominated on the first ballot
at Chicago. not by as large majority
as some Of them had been figuring,
but still by majority large enough
to show that Taft is decisively the
choice Of the party. There is to be
no compromise candidate, they say.
The Taft managers note that Taft was
nominated in 1908 without the votes
of Pennsylvania, Illinois, Wisconsin
and other states that recently have
gone for Roosevelt, and they say that
he will be renominated without them
now.
Active Campaigning to Begin
The contest from this time on will
be harder and there will probably be
less hesitation about the prophecies
of campaigning. Heavy work is to
begin at once in Massachusetts and
Nebraska, just as > has already be-
gun in Ohio, The effect of tie recent
Roosevelt victories on the situation
in Ohio and Massachusetts is the prob
lem in both camps. Ohio primaries
come May 81 and Massachusetts prim=
aries April 80.
But what chiefly disturbs the Taft
men is that they have come to under
stand the real intent of Rooseyelt's
policy in instituting contests in so
many states. Hitherto they have re-
garded this course as ineXplicable. in
view Of the fact that the national
committee would be sure to side with
the administration and dismiss the
con tests. Now they understand that
in starting these contests Roosevelt
was playing for the national COM
mttee and that Illinois, Wisconsin,
North Dakota, Maine and now Penn
sylvania have made it by no means
certain that the committee will not
want to hedge, at least to the ex.
tent of deciding some of the contests
Roosevelt's way. Since yesterday the
attitude of the committee is believed
to have become more Uncertain than
it formerly was. This it is now evil
dent is what Roosevelt has been play
ing for all along. There are already
1854 contests.
Taft Has 337 Delegates
Not a disaster merely a reverse.
That is the way the Taft people today
speak of the Pennsylvania result.
They add that it does not give the
faintest promise of ultimate victory
r Roosevenlt. Excluding Pennsyl-
vania. Taft now has 337 delegates
either pledged or friendly. Of the
twenty-three states in which delegates
are still to be elected. 1t is easy to
name fourteen which may confidently
be expected to support Taft. These
fourteen states will have 232 dele
gates which going to Taft would give
him 500, or twenty-nine more than
majority. And this reckoning does
not include Olio with it's forty-eight
delegates.
1t does, however give Roosevelt
much more than the Taft people be-
lieve he will secure and is made so
as to include everything Roosevelt
himself can possibly hope to get, as