Evening star., 1952-07-04
The Dirt is Showing

The Republican National Committee is con-
trolled by little band of willful men and
women who seem bent upon encompasSing their
own destruction and the destruction of the
Republican Party So it is entirely possible that
they will ignore the significant appeal that has
been made to them by % Of the Is Republican
Governors in this country.
The essence of this appeal is that the Repub-
lican candidate for President this year must go
before the people with clean hands If he is to
have a chance of winning the election. And to
insure that the candidates hands will be clean,
the Governors want an honest vote on the
seating of disputed delegations to the Chicago
convention.
If the procedure advocated by the pro-Taft
forces, who control the convention machinery, is
followed there will not be an honest vote. And
it viii not be honest for reasons that are perfectly
evident to any one.
The first step is to seat the delegates
temporarily. That is done by the national COM
mittee, and the controlling Taft members of that
body have amply demonstrated their ruthlessness
in accepting pro-Taft delegations. The dispute
then goes to the credentials committee, and ii
that group supports the national committee the
issue goes before the convention as whole.
Then this is what would happen under the
prevailing procedure which the Taft forces want
to follow: The case of Georgia, for example, would
be called up. The pro-Taft delegates from
Georgia who have been seated temporarily could
not vote in the convention roll call on their own
case. But farther down the alphabetical list are
disputed pro-Taft delegations from Louisiana
and probably Texas. They have been temporarily
seated and cannot vote when their own cases
arise. But they can vote on the Georgia dispute.
And when their own turns come they will want
the support of the pro-Taft men on the Georgia
delegation So Of course they will vote for the
Georgia delegates who have been temporarily
seated. These disputed delegates. will vote
together or they will fall separately and it is an
insult to any ones intelligence to imply that the
pro- Eisenhower delegates will have chance
of getting fair deal in such setup. The only
way to get fair test Is to adopt the recon-
mendation of the Governors and refuse to let
any of the disputed delegates vote on the seating
issue.
Some of Senator Taft's apologists wiring their
hands and say that the Governors are asking
for the impossible. David ingalls,, the Taft
campaign manager, says that the prevailing
rule cannot be changed. It it were changed, he
says, there could be phony claim filed in each
of the 48 States and nobody would be able to
rule on any Of the claims"
That too, is an insult to any ones intelli-
gence. Phony claims have not been filed in 48
States. The claims that have been filed involve
only IS of 1.2O6 delegates. But the final ruling
on those IS may be decisive in the nomination.
The Taft forces, if they control the conven-
tion as they have controlled the national COM
mittee, may grab these delegates. But they
cannot grab them without dirtying their hands,
and that dirt will still be there for the voters to
see when election day comes around. A lot has
been heard from these same Republicans about
corruption in Washington under the Democrats
But if the G. O. P. Old Guard sticks to the tactics
it has been using so far in Chicago it is hard to
see why the voters would turn to them to clean
up that corruption.