The times-news. [volume] (Hendersonville, N.C.) 1927-current, 1934-06-30
NEWSPAPERS OPINION
THE POLITICAL BoRAHMETER

| No one can tell with any certainty what is going
to take place in a national political campaign in
the United States until he learns which way Ser
ator William E. Borah is going to jump, And it
is still more confounding task to try to antici-
pate the veteran Idahoans leap before he an
nounces it. Now he has made it known that he
intends to stump the country this summer and
autumn in CRITICS moi the NRA and AAA and in
opposition to the Roosevelt administrations eda-
cational campaign to "sell" the New Deal to the
voters.
Senator Borah's influence does not arise from
the number of colleagues or party followers ne can
command-he is the antithesis of a Senator Per-
rose-but from a profound popular conviction
among friends and opponents that ne is utterly
sincere. In this instance it has been known that
he disagreed heartily with the crop reduction poll
cies of Secretary Wallace and was intent on root
ing monopolistic tendencies out of the NRA. But
the liberalism which eventually separated him from
President Hoover was assumed to have welded him
to that idol of liberals President Roosevelt.
Yet it appears there are different kinds of lib
erasm Senator Borah will take the field particu-
larly in support of his fellow progressive Repub-
licans or former Republicans, Senator Robert M.
LaFollette, Hiram johnson and Bronson Cutting
in Wisconsin, California, and New Mexico, respec-
lively Yet these insurgents also have the bene-
diction, expressed or implied, of President Roscoe
welt.
So in Wisconsin, Mr.. Borah, while denouncing
the works of the administration, will be joining
forces with it to help elect man who forswears
both Democracy and Republicansm to launch a
new party. In fact, his action might give consid-
cradle strength to the expectation of real third
party movement, knitting the insurgent Repub-
fcan bloc to the so-caled liberal forces in the
Democratic party and ultimately effecting gen.
eral realignment. 1t might do so if it did not at
the same time show the centrifugal forces tending
to throw apart any such organization.
The difficulty about liberalism or progresslvlsm
is that when society has reached given point
there are at least three directions in which it can
move, as compared to the one course by which it
got there. For example, there is the liberal pro-
gressivsm of trust-busters, such Senator Borah
and Senator Gerald F. Nye, entrusted to the hber-
alism of the Recovery Administrator and big bust
ness co-operator, General Hugh S. Johnson And
third, there is the further liberal progressivsm of
the George n. Peek or the Milo Reno schools Of
agricultural relief.
Upton Sinclair concluded in his early novel, "The
Jungle" that there are almost as many kinds Of
Socialism as there Socialists. Similarly, the
liberals who are continually called upon to form
third party are too likely to emulate the famous
general who jumped on his horse and rode off in
all directions. Meanwhile the conservatives have
much reader basis of unity in wanting merely to
oe let alone to stay where. they are or-f reac-
tionary-in recalling roseate past to which they
would like to return.
But whatever may be the tactical advantages
of complacency and the difficulties of insurgency
the declaration of purpose by Senator Borah points
to a stormy political summer. For it is not every
one who has the faculty of making trouble for both
liberals and conservatives at once-The Christian
Science Monitor.