page_title: Robert A. Taft
section_title: Senate Majority Leader
hierarchical_section_title: Robert A. Taft / Senate Majority Leader
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo of Ohio Senator Robert A. Taft from the Pocket Congressional Directory Eighty Third Congress.
context_page_description: Robert Alphonso Taft Sr. was an American conservative politician, lawyer, and scion of the Republican Party's Taft family. Taft represented Ohio in the United States Senate, briefly served as Senate Majority Leader, and was a leader of the conservative coalition of Republicans and conservative Democrats who prevented expansion of the New Deal. Often referred to as "Mr. Republican", he cosponsored the Taft–Hartley Act of 1947, which banned closed shops and other labor practices.
  The elder son of William Howard Taft, the 27th President of the United States, Robert Taft was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. He pursued a legal career in Cincinnati after graduating from Harvard Law School in 1913. Along with his brother Charles Phelps Taft II, he co-founded the law partnership of Taft Stettinius & Hollister. Taft served in the Ohio House of Representatives from 1921 to 1931 and in the Ohio Senate from 1931 to 1933. Though he lost re-election in 1932, he remained a powerful force in state and local politics.
  After winning election to the Senate in 1938 over incumbent Democrat Robert J.
context_section_description: Following Eisenhower's election and the Republican takeover of Congress, Taft served as Senate Majority Leader in 1953, and he strongly supported Eisenhower's domestic proposals. He worked hard to assist the inexperienced new officials of the administration. He even tried, with little success, to curb the excesses of red-baiting US Senator Joseph McCarthy. By April, Eisenhower and Taft were friends and golfing companions, and Taft was praising his former adversary. Defeat in 1952, it seemed, had softened Taft. No longer burdened by presidential ambitions, he had become less partisan, less abrasive, and more conciliatory; he was now widely regarded as the most powerful man in Congress.
  On May 26, 1953, Taft delivered his final speech, in which he presciently warned of the dangers of America's emerging Cold War foreign policy, specifically against US military involvement in Southeast Asia, which would later become the Vietnam War:
  I have never felt that we should send American soldiers to the Continent of Asia, which, of course, included China proper and Indo-China, simply because we are so outnumbered in fighting a land war on the Continent of Asia that it would bring about complete exhaustion even if we were able to win. ... So today, as since 1947 in Europe and 1950 in Asia, we are really trying to arm the world against Communist Russia, or at least furnish all the assistance which can be of use to them in opposing Communism.
  Is this policy of uniting the free world against Communism in time of peace going to be a practical long-term policy? I have always been a skeptic on the subject of the military practicability of NATO. ... I have always felt that we should not attempt to fight Russia on the ground on the Continent of Europe any more than we should attempt to fight China on the Continent of Asia.
caption: Taft during the 83rd Congress, 1953
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