The Alaska daily empire., 1923-05-09
Parties That Are Shot to Pieces.
(NeW York Worid.)


 The President of the National Republican Club hopes to see the time when men who have been elected by Republican votes and supported by Re- publican newspapers and who call themselves Re- publicans, but who at every opportunity assail 8 Republican Administration President and Cabinet, are thrown out of the Republican Party and over into the Democratic Party, where they belong" To make sure that his hearers did not mistake his meaning, MT Elsberg added that T have special reference to Senators La Toilette, Borah and John scn.'.
 The wish may be logical and legitimate but who is to throw these Senators of the Republican Party. and where does the authority exist that can transfer them into nominal Democrats assuming that they are Democrats? The truth is, of course, that political parties such have lost all their authority and all their discipline. They read nobody out and they read nobody in
 The court of last resort in every political party is now the direct primary. Any who can carry Republican primary is Republican lie might believe in free trade, in unconditional mem bership in the League of Nations, in State rights and in every policy that the Democratic Party ever advocated; yet if he carried his Republican prim- ary he would be Republican. He might 20 to state, in the dictatorship of the proetariat in the abolition of private property and in the extermina tion of the bourgeoise; yet if he carried his Re- publican primary he would still be Republican
 This is the situation in the Republican Party, and it is likewise the situation in the Democratic Party. Names have ceased to have meaning and the former lines of cleavage have been obiterated
 Certainly if MT. Harding is Republican, Sena tor La Toilette is not. Nevertheless Senator La roHele was nomln&h(d practically by accama- tion in the Republican primary in Wisconsin and elected practically by exclamation the polls. His kind of Republicanism, whatever it may be- is the Repnbcanism of Wisconsin. What is true in his case is true in lesser degree in the case of Sena- tor Johnson; and here again Senator Johnson's Re- according to the acid the primary and the polls is the Republicansm of California
 It is useless to talk of reading Republicans out of the Republican Party Democrats out of the Democratic Party MT. Hearst for eample is no more Of Democrat than Mir La Toilette is Re- nni to 1,;v Mr. Hearst bobs up serenly from time to time as he record shows, has fixed political principles of any kind. In 1918 he ran for Senator in both the Republican and Democratic primaries in Mich gan and 1t looks if he were preparing to run Tor President in both the Republican and Demo- cratic primarise in 1924. Who can stop him from calling himself anything he wishes to call himself 'r from using the machinery of whichever party IL Is most convenient for him to use?
 Party responsibility has broken down in the United States and with it has disappeared the only agency by which government has ever been made responsible but has the National Republican CIub any remedy that could this disease of progressive political disntegration? It is useless to try to re Sslipilsh regularity as the test for consider rable percentage Of both Republicans and Democrats main tain themselves in office by their defiance of reun larity. 9 some day there be political issue so clear arIv denned and so sharply drawn there will he new pohucal alignment Of the American people If that comes the words Republican and Democratic may possible for the New York Republicans to throw . toiete out of their party than was for the Wilson Democrats to throw Jim Reed out of their party