The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-08-03
(. OPS AFRAID
 OF LA TOILETTE
 EVEN IN DEFEAT
Party Menaced By Chance Of Having Both Houses
 Democratic
By CHARLES MICHELsoN

By CHARLES MICHELSON
 WASHINGTON, Aug. 2.-Senatol La Follete cannot complain because Brookhart, Norris and perhaps some others insist on continuing to run as republicans though the Wisconsin sena' tors candidacy is a protest against the iniquity of that party. He himself set the precedent for this way of playing the game. Through all the long years La Toilette has been the exponent of progressivism and the warning voice against G. O. F. philistinism, he has been careful to- keep the party label un- obscured. Minnesota and the Dakotas where they worship him, could go farm. er-labor, and he would charge over the border in campaign times and make speeches for the insurSent cause, bu, Wisconsin, his own principality, was al lowed no such heretical display. There has not been "a time for thirty years when he could not have been elected in Wisconsin regardless of what badge he close to assume or discard, but inva- riably his name has been found under the republican emblem on the ticket
 No political insurrection has ever been able to wean him from his vantage point. He did not even follow Roose- welt out of the party in 1912.
 Senator Till 1929
 Perhaps he might not have even this time taken to the hills if it did not hap pen that he is secure in his senatorship until 1929, so that, come veal or come woe. he remains a republican senator until he is seventy-four years old and cannot be displaced from his precedence in the finance committee and inter state commerce committee, should the Senate remain republican, without an earthquake. This brings up the inter eSting question of whether the republi- cans will read him out of the party formally next session. If they don't they will have to choose between hay. ing him head of the committee that deals with the railroads or continuing democrat in that place, which was their only way of lodging it when Gum mins became president of the Senate and the La Toilette crowd refused to permit him to continue as chairman of the interstate commerce committee as we'll.
 It may be mere coincidence that Senator Wheeler, who has cast his lot unreservedly with La Toilette, has also five years to go as senator, while Brookhart and Norris, who continue on the republican ticket, both are up for reelection this year. Should the .Ineoted suggestion that John T. Adams run for senator in Iowa as an indepen- dent (Brookhart having the regular re- publican nomination1 come to flower, the probabilities are that the pictur- esque Iowa member of the insurgent group will be missing from the Sixty ninth Congress. Not that Adams win get in, but he will give the conservative Iowa republicans somewhere to go, and that haven. coupled with the rise in the price of wheat, ought to let in the democrat.
 It will be remembered that six months ago Adams, as chairman of the republican national committee, started to read Brookhart, and Norris as we'll, out of the republican party, and urged the logic that unless putative republi- cans voted for their party's and their presidents policies they were better out than in from party standpoint.
 Whether the presence of Governor Bryan on the ticket with Davis will be as disastrous to- Norris in Nebraska as the threatened intervention of Adams in Iowa promises to be to Brookhart is questionable. While Bryan is as popu- lar as Norris, the latter seems to have a closer and more enduring hold on his admirers, wherefore it would occasion small surprise if Nebraska went demo. cratic on the presidential issue and still returned Norris as republican to the Senate.
 Both May Be Democratic
 The probability that the coming Sen. ate will have a democratic majority and the likelihood that the House will fol. low the same course is perhaps the most menacing thing in the whole political situation for Mir. Coolidge. As has been pointed out frequently, the democratic senators who come up this year are practically all from the south, where election is a matter of course, while the republicans in the same situation are nearly all from doubtful states. To put it mathematically, there are eleven re- publican senators whose reelection fs a matter of doubt and only two demo. crats who are in the least danger.
 After the experience of the past year when the republican President was without what Mir. Lodge calls "cohe rent majority" on which account noth, ing could be settled, the conservatives regardless of party, dread the thought of four years more of that sort of thing. A republican victory means that the La Toilette group again has the balance of power; democratic success means this group becomes simply a sub faction of the minority.
 Moreover, the very grave chance that La Toilette will get enough electoral votes to throw the election into Congress constitutes another argument against Mir. COolidge's election. Nobody out side the insurgent ranks looks with eQuanimity on the prospect of the con. fusion that would result. The House voting by states, is incapable of choos ing a president; the Senate. thanks tc the presence of the La Toilette group may likewise fail to select a vice presi dent, who under the constitution takes the larger office in the event of the House not electing a President by March 4. Beyond this the constitution gives no definite procedure. Inevitably the election would get into the courts and then until the supreme court gave verdict nobody knows just what would happen.
 How It Figures Out
 The olarD,t0O svonacsa box-oa- =