Evening star., 1937-11-01
WASHINGTON OBSERVATIONS
BY FREDERIC WILLIAM VILE,

No illusions fire the breasts of G. o. P.
topnotchers and insiders as to the truly
desperate plight of the Republican party.
The National Committee is convening
at Chicago this week in complete and
candid cognizance of conditions. The
party is without leader, program, unity
or funds. Probably at no time in Amer
ican political history has a national Or
ganization. which only year ago polled
1900, 900 votes, sunk to so low an estate.
Chicago will reverberate with brutally
frank lamentations on this score, cou-
pied with stentorian demands for mill
tant remedial measures. Divided and
distracted as the party is on matters OF
command and policy, Chairman Hamil-
ton will preside over a fairly unanimous
body, as far as the immediate business
in hand is commemorative proposal to
hold a midterm national convention to
formulate something smelling like a
platform OF the 106 National Commit
tee members, an advance nose count
discloses some 80 for the convention and
26 opposed. This divergence Of COM
mittee opinion on a relatively routine
issue is harmony personified, compared
to the discord that disunites G. o. P.
rank and file and the partys representa-
tives in Congress on that score and
nearly everything else.
In Senate and House, eminent Re-
publican spokesmen disapprove the con-
vention scheme favored Overwhelmingly
by the National Committee as interpre-
ters Of the popular will of the party.
Borah of Idaho, Capper of Kansas and
McNary of Oregon are openly hostile.
Vandenberg of Michigan rates as luke
warm, with leanings toward disapproval.
Bert Smell of New York, House minority
leader, is about the only Republican Of
stature in Congress who warmly espouses
the Hoover-inspired convention plan.
Representative Joe Martin of Massa-
chusetts, chairman of the Republican
Congressional Committee, is just as Bit
terly against it. G. o. P. captains, inno-
cent of partisanship as between rival
leadership claims of Hoover and Landon,
and craving only party solidarity, are
particularly sore over Borah's incorrigible
passion for sulking. It's not generally
known that in their anxiety to give the
party the benefit of the Senator s
national prestige and political acumen,
he was the almost universal choice as
head of committee of five, to be
charged with authority to refashion
Republicanism from top to bottom and
map out ways and means for it's regen-
Grafton. Idahos biggest potato appar-
emily would have none of it, possibly
because the proposal had the joint sup
port of Hoover and Landon, respecting
whom Borah's reputed reaction is: "a
plague on both your houses" He is
supposed to suffer under the incurable
complex that the Californian as we'll as
the Kansan is yoked to the Interests" I"
oil, in particular, in Landon's case.
X \ X
Jesse H. Jones, r. r. G. chairman,
perhaps because the functions and funds
of that 5h-year-old $4,000, 900 900 or
ganization of Hooverian origin are about
to come to an end, recently took the first
vacation he's INDUCED himself in 80
years. 1t consisted of five weeks in the
Far West and Northwest, including
British Columbia. The Texan ascribes
his physical well-being and emotional
composure, after a nerve-racking quin-
quennium on the palpitating Potomac,
to the fact that he tranSacts most of his
business by long distance telephone. He
averages two hours day talking across
the country and sometimes across
oceans. having found by experience that