The Elephant That Brays

Control over the GOP by the Establishment Insiders is not something new or ephemeral; it dates back at least to 1936. The Establishment has controlled the Pachyderm Party by wheeling and dealing to control its Presidential nomination. Every Republican convention pits the Conservative Congressional wing against the Establishment-controlled Presidential wing. Naturally, the media try hard to make it appear that the Conservatives, always dubbed the "Old Guard," are a minority pitted against the "progressive" or "moderate" wing of the party, which represents the grass-roots "little people" of the international banking fraternity.

The story behind this wheeling and dealing to keep the nomination in the control of the Establishment is one of great importance. If real Republicans are ever to recover their party, they must understand the powers they are dealing with.

As the 1920's roared on, the stock market climbed to dizzy heights, fueled by ever-increasing amounts of paper money pumped into circulation by the Federal Reserve, which had been established following an enormous lobbying campaign by Colonel Edward M. House, a founder of the Council on Foreign Relations; Felix Warburg, a charter CFR member; and other Wall Street Insiders. The Federal Reserve was supposed to make America depression-proof, and to represent a giant step forward in "democracy." Just why numerous international bankers were so interested in "democracy" was not explained.

In the summer of 1929, after eight years of easy money promoted by an artifically low interest rate set by the Federal Reserve, the "Fed" reversed itself and, in order to stop runaway inflation, bounced the interest rate sky high. This in effect stuck a pin into the stock market balloon, which began its crash in October 1929, proving that America indeed was not "depression-proof." Popular mythology has it that the stock market crash was a great blow to Wall Street. To the vast majority of patriotic and honest bankers and brokers it was, since Wall Street became a whipping boy during the '30's. But if you are an Insider, more money is made faster during a depression than at any other time. Insiders who got out of the market at its height, in the middle of 1929, were able to buy stocks back at an 80 percent discount four years later. Others made enormous wealth by being "short" in the market and riding the Dow-Jones-average toboggan down to great profits.

In 1932, the Democrats elected Franklin D. Roosevelt to office on one of the most Conservative platforms ever written by any party in the history of the United States. Of course, the platform was mere pretense—"dialectics," as the Communists would call it. FDR had been a Wall Street banker, and he was propelled into office by the Insiders, who saw a chance to capitalize on the chaos they had caused. When FDR in his fireside chats railed against the "malefactors of great wealth," building the dialectical image that he was "a traitor to his class," he was really throwing the Insiders into the briar patch, right where they wanted to be, like Br'er Rabbit in the Uncle Remus stories. FDR began deficit spending, which over a period of years has resulted in hundreds of billions of dollars of interest profits to bankers. The bulk of these profits have gone to a handful of New York banks.

In order to perpetuate deficit spending and launch an "America last" foreign policy, the Insiders had to assert the same control over the Republican Party that they already possessed over the Democrat Party. In 1936, in a confidential meeting in keeping with the political legend of the smoke-filled hotel room, a group of Insiders laid long-range plans to control the Republican Party. We know of the meeting from an account by Dr. Glenn Frank, president of the University of Wisconsin, whom the Insiders mistakenly believed they could trust. The presiding Insider at this secret meeting in the royal suite on the 21st floor of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York was Thomas Lamont (CFR), senior partner in J.P. Morgan & Company. According to Professor Quigley, Lamont was the most important connection between the international bankers and the hard-core Left in America. Quigley states that the chief evidence against the Lamont family

". . . can be found in the files of HUAC which show Tom Lamont, his wife Flora, and his son Corliss as sponsors and financial angels to almost a score of extreme Left organizations including the Communist Party itself . . . During this whole period of over two decades, Corliss Lamont, with the full support of his parents, was one of the chief figures in "fellow traveler" circles and one of the chief spokesmen for the Soviet point of view . . ."

Six other prominent financiers and industrialists were also present. The purpose of the meeting was to "decide" who the Republican nominee for President should be. At the meeting it was generally agreed that their support would be thrown to Governor Alfred M. Landon of Kansas, who, of course, never stood a chance to win, because there was no beating Roosevelt in 1936. Support of Landon by the Lamont clique was significant. Influential Liberal Republicans such as "Ogden Mills [CFR]; Eugene Meyer [CFR, financier and owner of the Washington Post], Winthrop Aldrich [CFR; a Rockefeller relative], recognized that . . . Landon might be adapted to their own purposes." Landon had boasted, "I have cooperated with the New Deal to the best of my ability," and had even issued public praise of New Deal designer Rexford Guy Tugwell, devoted radical socialist. When Landon went down the electoral drain, the New Deal was safe for four more years. The Insiders had had nothing to lose either way.

Nineteen forty was a crucial year for the Insiders. Through appeasement of Hitler, who had been financed and protected by the Round Table clique, the world was being maneuvered into a war. The Insiders know that it is in a time of crisis during war or depression that dictatorial power can be concentrated in the federal government. It was essential to the Insiders that the "America last" international policies and welfare state deficit spending be continued. However, there was considerable doubt as to whether the American public would accept an unprecedented third term for FDR. Therefore, it was necessary to take control of the Republican party away from the real Republicans and make sure that the 1940 Presidential candidate was a man acceptable to the Insiders. The Insiders found their man in Wendell Willkie.

The man behind Wendell Willkie was the late Russell Davenport, a Democrat who belonged to such world-state-promoting outfits as the World Citizenship Council, Atlantic Union Committee, and Federal Union, and served on the council of advisors of Student Federalists, which later merged with United World Federalists. Davenport was associated with Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) and was later a founder of Republican Advance, the ADA of the Republican Party. Davenport was one of the founders of Fortune magazine for the late Henry Luce (CFR). A Leftist from the beginning, he felt his ideas could be sold to businessmen through this slick magazine. After the 1940 election Davenport set down his philosophy in Fortune. His article, "USA: The Permanent Revolution," was widely syndicated in the press as "the American credo." It was a clever attempt to sell the idea that American capitalism had lost its fight and that ours was now a "mixed economy"—half socialist and half free. To Davenport this represented a great "social achievement." Boiled down, his argument was that America can prevail over Russia only if it borrows many of Russia's ideas and applies them to America.

Davenport applauded the fact that "every year more businessmen see the light and some few of them become missionaries [for the new concept of capitalism]. The result is that American business is erecting a social structure that many a state planner would envy. A true industrial democracy is emerging." ("Industrial democracy" is a code phrase for socialism among Marxists.)

Much of what we know of the Insiders' maneuvering of Willkie into the Republican nomination comes from the autobiography of Davenport's wife, published in 1967. Marcia Davenport tells us that her husband was holding sessions of a discussion group known as the "Fortune Round Table" (was the choice of words a coincidence?), whose participants were chosen for their "eminence" in their chosen fields. The round table group included "leading industrialists, bankers, financiers, scholars, labor union leaders, sociologists, economists and technical specialists." Mrs. Davenport writes: "Russell came home from his Roundtable meeting and walked into the house saying, 'I've met the man who ought to be the next President of the United States.' His name was Wendell Willkie." In describing Willkie, Marcia Davenport says:

"Some people called him [Willkie] the advocate of free enterprise; some, the spokesman of big business against the government. These were mostly mistaken summations of Wendell Willkie. He was an old-fashioned, hell-raising, hard-wrangling liberal . . . He was a Democrat, a man of the people . . ."

Willkie was in fact a registered Democrat who only five years earlier had been elected by Tammany Hall to the New York County Democratic Committee. As a student at Indiana University he had been a member of the Socialist Club. Willkie, the high-salaried head of a large utility company, had never done anything in or for the Republican party and was completely unknown outside his own limited but highly influential circles. What apparently sold the Establishment Insiders on Willkie was, as Mrs. Davenport puts it, that he was "outspoken in opposition to what was then a classic isolationist position in the Republican party." Mrs. Davenport claims that the Willkie for President idea occurred to a number of individuals simultaneously, including "Harry [Henry] Luce and other members of Time, Inc., who met him in our house." According to Mrs. Davenport, the leadership from the financial community was "headed by Thomas W. Lamont." She adds:

"Willkie did not just happen to the Republican party . . . Several times each week we had people to dinner, sometimes by careful plan, when it best served the purpose to enclose the occasion in the form of an agreeable social meeting . . ."

The Establishment worked hard to sell Willkie to the American public through a gigantic publicity spree, which columnist George Sokolsky called "the advertising agent's holiday." Through their financial and other contacts throughout the communications media, the Insiders made it appear that there was spontaneous public interest in Wendell Willkie. Willkie was catapulted into the political arena by an article in the Saturday Evening Post, which was followed by articles suggesting Willkie for the Republican nomination that suddenly blossomed in leading newspapers and magazines. His picture "spontaneously" appeared on the covers of Time and other popular magazines, and the unknown lawyer mysteriously appeared as an author in Sunday magazines. He was given prestige in business circles by a laudatory article in Fortune, and in popular circles by a feature article in Life (Life, Fortune, and Time were all Luce publications).

The Willkie boom was engineered by top advertising executives from Madison Avenue, who planted news articles in magazines and newspapers, stimulated petitions, chain letters, advertisements, telegrams, and fund raising, and started Willkie clubs and Willkie mailing committees. Seven weeks before the Republican convention, the Gallup Poll reported that Willkie was the favorite of only 3 percent of Republican voters.

As the convention approached, one big stumbling block remained for Willkie—Senator Robert A. Taft, the choice of party Conservatives. Fearing that perhaps they might not be able to put Willkie over after all, the Insiders decided to make an attempt to buy Taft. The week before the convention opened. Senator and Mrs. Taft were invited to a New York dinner party given by Ogden Reid (CFR), publisher of the New York Herald Tribune, and Mrs. Reid. The details of the dinner party are set forth in One Man: Wendell Willkie, by C. Nelson Sparks. The major facts have been thoroughly corroborated by both Robert Taft and Wendell Willkie.

Present at this dinner party were Thomas Lamont (CFR), senior partner of J.P. Morgan & Company, and Mrs. Lamont; Lord Lothian of the Round Table, then Ambassador to the United States from Great Britain; Mr. and Mrs. John Pillsbury of the Minneapolis milling family; and Mr. and Mrs. Wendell Willkie. Following the dinner Lord Lothian, a member of the British Liberal Party who had accompanied socialist George Bernard Shaw in his loving pilgrimage to Moscow, was asked to make a few remarks. The substance of his speech was that it was the duty of the United States to go all out at once to aid Britain in the war. This was in June 1940, a year and a half before Pearl Harbor. Lamont was then called on, and expressed himself as being wholly in accord with Lord Lothian. Willkie was called on next. He enthusiastically endorsed everything that Lord Lothian and Lamont had said, maintaining that it was our duty to go to war at once to aid England.

By this time, the plot was pretty clear to Taft. He realized that he had been invited to the Reid dinner for the purpose of ascertaining whether he was willing to pay the price to get the support of the Insiders for the Republican nomination—namely, an all-out war declaration that would satisfy the New York banking interests and the British Ambassador. Taft knew that if he endorsed the remarks of Lothian, Lamont, and Willkie, he would automatically become acceptable to the financial interests and thereby greatly improve his chances of winning the nomination. Taft, however, was a man of rare principle, and he declined this opportunity to win the support of the Insiders. When called on, he simply observed that he could add nothing to his remarks in the Senate, where he had declared that Americans did not want to go to war to beat a totalitarian system in Europe if they were to get socialism here when it was all over. A few days later, the New York Herald Tribune announced its unequivocal support for Willkie, with a three-column appeal to the delegates on the front page calling Willkie "Heaven's gift to the nation in its time of crisis."

When the Republican national convention convened in Philadelphia, Willkie had only 105 delegates. Even the Gallup (CFR) Poll reported that Willkie was the favorite of a mere 17 percent of Republicans.

Only the politically naive could believe that hundreds of delegates suddenly went overboard for Willkie out of sheer fascination with "the barefoot boy from Wall Street." Some Republicans saw through the publicity blitz, and forty Republican Congressmen called for a "real Republican." Congressman Usher Burdick declared:

"I believe I am serving the best interests of the Republican party by protesting in advance and exposing the machinations and attempts of J.P. Morgan and other New York utility bankers in forcing Wendell Willkie on the Republican Party . . . There is nothing to the Willkie boom for president except the artifical public opinion being created by newspapers, magazines and the radio.

"The reason back of all this is money. Money is being spent by someone and lots of it. This is a good time to find out whether the American people are to be let alone in the selection of a Republican candidate for the Presidency, or whether the "special interests" of this country are powerful enough to dictate to the American people."

At the convention the galleries were packed with noisy Willkie supporters who chanted "We Want Willkie" hour upon hour in an attempt to stampede the convention and give the erroneous impression that the Willkie bandwagon came from the grass roots. Lamont money could buy anything.

Professionals around the country hired girls to get on the telephone and stimulate a deluge of pro-Willkie telegrams to the delegates. Not all the telegrams were signed. Also, the Insiders sought to influence delegates by having the mortgage holders and bankers to whom they owed money call them on behalf of Willkie. The chairman of one delegation stated that he was offered $19,000 for the expenses of his delegation if he would deliver his state's votes for Willkie. And so one of the great show biz successes of the Twentieth Century was staged in Philadelphia, as the Insiders succeeded in heading off Taft and making sure that New Deal foreign and domestic policies with their deficit spending and resulting millions in interest to bankers were secure.

In her autobiography Marcia Davenport describes the Willkie campaign:

"The campaign began. It was one thing for a small group of inspired men to incite the American people to demand the nomination of Wendell Willkie and to ram him down the throats of the Republican party. It was quite another thing to mount a presidential campaign on the shoulders and through the resources of that party . . .

". . . I marvel today at the audacity of a handful of amateurs [sic] who drove in the nomination of Willkie over the heads of the whole Republican old guard."

Willkie's campaign of glorifying the New Deal both at home and abroad led, of course, to a staggering defeat. In spite of all their efforts to nominate him, the Establishment Insiders couldn't have cared less that Willkie lost. Their objective had been to ensure that the voters were not given a choice, to wrap their tentacles around the Republican party, and to deal a death blow to the two-party system.

In assessing the Willkie movement Mrs. Davenport calls Willkie's defeat:

". . . the most constructive defeat a candidate ever met . . . It changed the direction of the Republican policy during the war and in the harried years of non-peace afterwards . . . No Republican since has taken a leading place in American and world affairs who did not follow the path that [liberal Democrat] Willkie blazed. And when the old guard, after twenty-four years of battling his ghost and his echo, nominated one of their own for the presidency, Goldwater went down to the most crushing defeat in presidential campaign history. "

Mrs. Davenport provides us with this significant anecdote about the end of the Willkie campaign:

"The night after the 1940 election Russell and I were alone at home . . . The doorbell rang, about eleven o'clock. I went to the door—to Harry Hopkins [Roosevelt's aide]. I had never met him though Russell had more times than he admitted. Hopkins was like a walking corpse, bone-pale, emaciated, bent and stooped with weakness. He shuffled into the drawing room with me, saying to Russell, 'Tell me about it. Tell me how you did it.'" [Emphasis added.]

Following his election defeat Willkie continued to serve the Insiders. During the war years few pro-Communist propaganda moves were more successful than Willkie's round-the-world trip. As columnist George N. Crocker describes it:

"The flighty Wendell Willkie, after losing in his try for the presidency in 1940, 'suddenly got religion' and became an ebullient emissary for Roosevelt, traveling to London, Moscow and Chungking in an Army Transport plane, emotionally overcome by his precipitate arrival in the upper regions of international fame. His much publicized slogan 'One World' served well to cover up the real state of affairs . . . Whether other Republican leaders, such as Hoover and Taft, and dissident Democrats such as former Secretary of War Harry H. Woodring, looked upon these antics of Wendell Willkie as those of an opportunistic hypocrite or an impressionable dupe we know not. They themselves had no hallucinations about a 'grand coalition of peoples, fighting a common war of liberation.'"

A companion of Willkie on his trip and the ghostwriter of his book, One World (the title is very significant), was Communist party member Joseph Fels Barnes (CFR), a relative of the Rothschild banking dynasty. Later Barnes was to ghostwrite Dwight D. Eisenhower's book. Crusade In Europe.

In 1944, with a war going on, the Insiders had little to fear from the Republicans. However, they took no chances. Polls taken by CFR member George Gallup showed that the GOP could not win unless it continued the New Deal foreign policy and named candidates who would appeal to left-leaning Democrats. The Gallup Poll also "announced" that 68 percent of Republican voters were for Thomas E. Dewey (CFR), and that he was the only Republican with a chance to win.

Dewey carried on a weak campaign and refused to mention, because of the personal request of George C. Marshall, the Republicans' best issue: how Roosevelt had invited and encouraged the Pearl Harbor attack. Dewey knew that FDR had refused to negotiate with the pro-American government of Prince Konoye of Japan, and had given its successor an ultimatum that meant war. Dewey knew that we had broken the top Japanese code before Pearl Harbor, and also was aware that FDR, his Secretaries of War and Navy, and Chief of Staff George C. Marshall, had had advance warnings of the Japanese attack. He knew that Pearl Harbor was a "set-up" and a disaster for which the Commander-in-Chief should have been held personally responsible. The American people had the right to know too, but they never found out. Insiders don't tattle—with the possible exception of Dr. Carroll Quigley, if he really is one.

In 1948, despite the Republican party tradition against nominating a loser, the Insiders successfully trotted the lackluster Dewey back on stage once again, complete with CFR Gallup Polls showing that he was a sure thing. To insure the nomination, the Deweyites spent money and made deals and promises that Taft would never have made.

After the convention one delegate ran for the train and died of a heart attack on it. He had $1500 in fresh money on him, and the other delegates claimed it should be divided among them.

One of the deals made by the Dewey managers was with Congressman Charles Halleck, who was promised the Vice Presidential nomination if he could deliver the Indiana delegation to Dewey; but the Insiders did not trust Halleck. Their house organ, the New York Times, declared:

"Surely not Mr. Halleck! Mr. Halleck would bring into the campaign the perfect record of a Republican isolationist. Mr. Halleck voted against Selective Service in the summer of 1940 . . .Mr. Halleck voted against Lend-Lease . . . He voted against the British loan, he voted against the Hall Reciprocal Trade program in 1940 . . . He led the plan to cut appropriations under the Marshall plan . . . "

Here's a good summary of the kind of candidate the Insiders will not tolerate. They will not allow a candidate on the ticket—even in second place—unless he has a foreign policy acceptable to the New York financiers and banking interests who profit so greatly from the New Deal internationalist foreign policy.

Earl Warren of California was chosen as the Vice Presidential nominee. Warren had begun his political career as a hard-fighting enforcer of anti-Communist and anti-crime laws. However, following the mysterious and never-solved murder of his father, Earl Warren had suddenly changed, almost as if he had been blackmailed, and went on to establish his notorious pro-Communist record.

Dewey and Warren did not campaign on the major issue of that year, which was Communist infiltration in government. The exposure of Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White, and other Communists in high government positions had given Republicans their best issue—but Dewey and Warren did not discuss it.

Dewey went into the '48 election with everything in his favor. He was faced not by the invincible Roosevelt, but by a highly vincible Harry Truman. The Democrats had been in office for four long and troublesome terms. Truman was not a popular President, and the Democratic party was split three ways, with Henry Wallace siphoning off far-Left voters and with the Dixiecrats in the South. The country was ripe for a change. All the pre-election polls showed Dewey far out in front, but, accepting in almost every particular the liberal analysis of how to run a campaign, he proceeded to blow it. Dewey's campaign was a textbook study of liberal Republican strategy. Its ideological bias leaned heavily toward Liberalism—a fact Dewey underlined by virtually disowning the Republican Party in Congress and steering particularly clear of arch-rival Robert Taft.

Truman pitched his campaign against the Republican 80th Congress. Dewey made his fatal mistake when he did not defend it. The Republican 80th Congress, under the leadership of Taft, had made the greatest record of any Congress in the Twentieth Century. For the first time since the start of the New Deal, it reduced taxes, balanced the budget, and reduced the national debt.

It had exposed numerous Communists who had infiltrated the New Deal. It had enacted the Taft-Hartley law over Truman's veto. It had authorized the Hoover Commission to reorganize the government, and had passed the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, limiting the President to two terms.

Dewey assumed that the Midwestern heartland of the party was secure and that his job was to corral Liberal votes in the East. He also assumed that the key to Republican success was in the big cities—another theorem presently favored by the Liberal GOP.

What happened? Dewey accomplished the major strategic objectives he thought were necessary to his election. He carried supposedly decisive New York State and triumphed in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, running strongly in the major metropolitan centers. Yet he lost the election because he failed to carry the Republican base he thought he could take for granted. It was the crowning irony of the New York-big city strategy that the 1948 election was lost through defection of the Midwestern farm vote. Dewey lost the key Midwestern states of Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin by an aggregate of less than 100,000 votes, and thereby lost the election. Dewey's campaign was so Liberal that Midwesterners found Truman more to their liking. Pollster Samuel Lubell observed:

"Truman rather than Dewey seemed the conservative candidate to many voters . . . The harshest fact about the 1948 voting from the Republican viewpoint was how many ordinarily conservative persons feared a Republican victory . . .

"The net significance of the Dewey debacle was that it demonstrated the political liabilities of being neither fish nor fowl."

The accuracy of this comment is suggested by the fact that Dewey got fewer votes in 1948 than he did in 1944. Some 682,000 voters in the election did not bother to mark a ballot for either Presidential candidate, and in sixteen states the vote for Congressional candidates was larger than that for Presidential aspirants. Dewey himself observed, in the aftermath of the election, that it "looks as though two or three million Republicans stayed home."

It is also possible that voters felt there was no apparent difference between the candidates to make it desirable to vote for the Republican. Dewey was doubtless personally humiliated, but the Insiders had plenty of their men around the hapless Harry Truman, a small-time outsider who had been hoisted into national politics by the notorious Pendergast machine of Kansas City. Following the '48 election Democrats bragged about the trick they had pulled. Jack Redding, former publicity director of the Democratic National Committee, in his book, Inside the Democratic Party, quoted Democratic National Chairman Robert Hannegan as saying in a Democratic strategy huddle:

"Actually, if the Republicans were smart, they'd run Taft. He'd make a better candidate and would probably be harder for us to beat because he would fight harder. Don't make the mistake of underrating Taft. . . . The fact is Taft is a fighter and will make a terrific fight for what he represents. Dewey will be "me-too" all over again . .

". . Hit Taft hard and often; maybe we can stop him from getting the nomination and at the same time embarrass Dewey."

Harold Ickes put it more bluntly. He said: "With the bases loaded, the Republicans sent to the plate their bat boy. They could have sent their Babe Ruth—Bob Taft." Dewey had indeed snatched defeat from the jaws of victory for the Republicans, but either way it was a victory for the Insiders, who cared not a whit whether their man Dewey or the perfectly acceptable substitute, Harry Truman, sat in the White House.

The Insiders realized that 1952 would be a turning-point year in American history. It was almost a foregone conclusion that after thirty years of Democrat rule the nation was gasping for a change. The Truman scandals, the Korean War, Communist infiltration in government, plus the fact that for the first time in twenty years the GOP did not face an incumbent President, all combined to make the Republican Presidential nomination a valuable prize. Although the Insiders had been selecting Republican candidates since 1936, their hold on the Republican Party for 1952 looked tenuous. The Taft Conservative forces had been gaining in strength and were preparing to make an all-out assault on the Presidency. But the Insiders were determined to make the two parties as much alike as Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee.

Colonel Edward M. House had established the Council on Foreign Relations to carry out Karl Marx's dictum: "Infiltrate both or all of the political organizations—eliminate all opposition and confuse the people." Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), which included numerous CFR members in its membership, had served well as the Fabian Socialist movement within the Democratic party. Russell Davenport of Willkie campaign fame, himself a behind-the-scenes wheelhorse in the ADA, was determined that the GOP should have its own ADA, which would serve as a leftwing Trojan horse within the Republican party. The ADA-type organization for the GOP was called Republican Advance; it was bankrolled by Nelson Rockefeller (CFR) and Sidney Weinberg. In hearings held before the Select Committee on Lobbying Activities on July 7, 1950, former FDR Attorney General Francis Biddle gave the following testimony:

Mr. Brown: Have you [ADA] become more active in the Republican party recently, your organization?

Mr. Biddle: No—we have not, except—well, in this sense. Our influence has been rather striking. I do not know if you have noted the organization of a similar movement in the Republican party—I don't think they have a name for it—led by Russell Davenport.

Mr. Brown: You mean Republican Advance or something like that?

Mr. Biddle: Something like that. I thought it might be called Republicans for Democratic Action, but that did not seem quite appropriate . . . [Emphasis added.]

Republican Advance had its beginnings in 1950. On the Fourth of July that year, twenty-one Republican Congressmen joined what they termed a "revolt" against the Taft wing of the party. They announced their support of the new Republican group calling itself "Advance," which had been launched in semi-secrecy the week prior to the announcement in Philadelphia. Advance hoped to unseat Senator Taft and to dilute the influence of Conservatives within the party, and of other Conservatives. The Advance statement was issued in opposition to the GOP statement of policy adopted in February 1950 by House and Senate Republicans and concurred in by the Republican National Committee. The statement said that the case was merely "liberty versus socialism." The "Statement of Policy" issued by Republican Advance announced the intention to have the GOP "play down" its campaign against socialism and Communism within the government. It would commit the party instead to a strong civil rights platform and a welfare state along Roosevelt-Truman lines.

The Los Angeles Times of July 14, 1950, reported that twenty-one Republican Congressmen endorsed the principle that the Republican Party must "place strong emphasis on civil and social rights as a keystone for national unity." The principal ideological paragraph in Advance's manifesto asserted:

"The real issue against the Democrats does not lie with the goals . . . The real issue . . . lies with the means of achieving these goals . . . The Republicans have failed to sell themselves by attacking the product of the Democrats. They have not presented satisfactory alternatives to the Democratic projects they have attacked." [Emphasis added.]

Prior to the formation of Republican Advance the main thrust of the Republican Party was exposing Communism and fighting socialism. These two aspects were dropped in favor of fighting for civil rights, social legislation, and internationalism.

Although at the time the Republican Advance statement was brushed off by the Republican National Committee, which promised to keep up a hot war against the Marxists, for the first time the Left was organized within Republican Congressional ranks. The turning-point had been passed: the Republican Party had made a decisive turn to the Left.

Among the twenty-one Congressmen on the original list of Congressional sponsors of Republican Advance were John Davis Lodge (CFR; brother of Henry Cabot Lodge, CFR), Clifford Case (CFR), Christian Herter (CFR), Jacob Javits (CFR), Kenneth Keating, Thruston Morton, Hugh Scott, and Richard M. Nixon (CFR).

Many of the twenty-one Congressmen were merely "fronts" for the CFR leaders of Advance, such as Thomas E. Dewey and John Foster Dulles. Among other political figures involved were Herbert Brownell, who became Attorney General in the Eisenhower cabinet. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge (CFR), Senator Ralph Flanders, and Sherman Adams. Also supporting Advance was the nation's most influential publisher, Henry Luce (CFR) of Time, Life and Fortune.

Advance was soon to emerge from its cocoon and become Citizens for Eisenhower. Much of the background of the Citizens for Eisenhower movement is provided for us by an article by Paul Hoffman (CFR) in Colliers magazine of October 26, 1956, entitled "How Eisenhower Saved the Republican Party." This article can be read in any major library and is one of the most illuminating documents by or about the Insiders ever made public.

Hoffman and his wife, Leftwing Democrat Anna Rosenberg, have been key figures in the capture of the GOP by the Left. Hoffman was described by U.S. News & World Report of December 30, 1955, as "an influential, though unofficial. Presidential advisor," and was a key man in the nomination and election of Eisenhower. Before he became involved in politics, Hoffman's chief claim to fame was that he had piloted the Studebaker-Packard Corporation over the rapids of financial collapse. His qualifications for restructuring the Republican party included his career as a "professional spendthrift with other people's money" through foreign aid, and his advocacy of the thesis that American foreign aid should be not temporary but permanent; he had also advocated giving cabinet rank to the agency that dispensed the money.

In December 1948, months after General Marshall himself had abandoned any such idea, Hoffman was still calling for a coalition government with the Communists in China. He has served as a trustee of the Committee for Economic Development (CED), the major propaganda arm of the Council on Foreign Relations, and of the Ford Foundation, a horn of plenty for Leftwingers and Leftwing projects on every continent; he was also a trustee of the CFR-spawned Institute of Pacific Relations, called by the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee an "instrument of Communist policy, propaganda and military intelligence." Hoffman has been a member of such oneworld outfits as the UN Association of the United States, the American Committee on United Europe, and Americans United for World Government. Now involved with the United Nations Special Fund, Hoffman, a close friend of the late publishing magnate Henry Luce, has been responsible for channeling money to Castro's Cuba and other Communist nations. Former Ambassador Spruille Braden once remarked:

"The kindest thing I can say about Hoffman is that he is a damn fool. I would be sorry to think he knew that this whole business of foreign aid has been a fulfillment of Soviet policy. But if he doesn't know it he is a damn fool. Lenin and Stalin both said it was the purpose of Soviet Communism to get the developed countries to send financial help to the underdeveloped countries."

Hoffman has been one of the financiers of the National Committee for an Effective Congress, a group which is somewhat to the left of the ADA. Hoffman, a top Insider himself, is married to Anna Rosenberg. In the early 1950's Mrs. Rosenberg, who was later to be the brains behind Nelson Rockefeller's political career, was working in the Defense Department, picking key personnel for the entire defense establishment. Despite the fact that the Senate confirmed her appointment, Mrs. Rosenberg is seriously suspect. Nobody wants to discuss or expose her for fear of being called anti-Semitic, but criticism of Mrs. Rosenberg's background has nothing to do with her religion, only with her politics.

All of her adult life she has been on the Marxist side of the world revolution. Born in Hungary, she worked closely for many years with the revolutionary Marxist, Sidney Hillman. For years she wrote for Red organs, lectured to Red groups, and promoted Red activities. The December 8, 1942 issue of the official Communist publication, New Masses, contains an article by her. The magazine introduced her as "New York Regional Director, War Manpower Commission," the title which the future Assistant Secretary of Defense held under President Roosevelt at that time. That issue of New Masses showed a drawing of the author in connection with the article. Placing the drawing beside a photograph of Mrs. Anna Rosenberg shows that it was not a case of mistaken identity, as she claimed.

Ralph DeSola, a former Communist, testified under oath that he had attended meetings of the Communist John Reed Club with Mrs. Rosenberg in the mid-1930's, and that she was a member of the Communist Party. Although DeSola identified her by sight as the same Anna Rosenberg whom he knew to be a Communist, Mrs. Rosenberg steadfastly maintained that it was a case of mistaken identity. DeSola's testimony could not be refuted, but neither could it be corroborated. It was brought out that there were forty Anna Rosenbergs in New York City at that time, and that six had signed Communist petitions. Another Anna Rosenberg, who had since moved to California, claimed that she had been a member of the John Reed Club during the '30's, so that DeSola's testimony was clouded.

However, Mrs. Rosenberg did contradict her own testimony. She testified, "I re-read the Dies Committee report and the Anna Rosenberg [of the John Reed Club] was a writer. I am not a writer . . . I have never written anything." But a little later, on November 29, 1950, Mrs. Rosenberg told the same Senate Committee, "I have a full list of the organizations to which I have belonged, and of everything I have written." (Emphasis added.) Mrs. Rosenberg then submitted a long list of articles she had written, thus showing that she had testified falsely under oath in stating that she had "never written anything." It is significant, too, that she failed to list the article she had written for the Communist New Masses of December 8, 1942. She admitted she "wrote for New School for Social Research" and "gave courses on collective bargaining at New School for Social Research, 1940." The New School for Social Research, as various official investigations show, is a hotbed of Marxists of all varieties. General Eisenhower was an old friend of Mrs. Rosenberg and knew her favorably long before her patron, George C. Marshall, took her into the Defense Department as a manpower expert.

The opposition to her Defense Department appointment was violently and vehemently attacked by official Communist organs and by the multitude of Communist fronts and Insider-controlled publications throughout the country. By the vehemence of their defense of Mrs. Rosenberg, Hoffman's wife, the Communists and Insiders showed that she was of special importance in their plans.

In the Colliers article, "How Ike Saved the Republican Party, " Hoffman described meeting Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan to discuss blocking the nomination of Taft in 1952. Vandenberg, who wanted to nominate Eisenhower, explained the "quandary" faced by the Republican Party (as related by Hoffman):

"Half the Republican leadership, many of them utterly sincere men, could not, it seemed, grasp the overriding fact that we lived in a very dangerous world . . . Half our party—the isolationist, fortress-America half—seemed equally unable to grasp the fact that America has changed at home too; that labor unions were here to stay; that government had a partner's role to play in preserving free enterprise; that ordinary people needed some insurance against the dangers that go with our free system of economic abundance.

"There was another half of our Republican party too, a modern-liberal half, whose work and philosophy was demonstrated in the achievements of such great state governors as Sherman Adams, Tom Dewey and Earl Warren. This half had come to grips with the problems of the 20th Century and had worked out a program, both at home and abroad, that seemed to be better than anything the Democrats could offer. [Emphasis added.]"

Hoffman made several trips to Europe to induce Eisenhower to run. He said in Colliers:

"I returned to Paris again in November of 1951. That week we spoke several times—away from his offices at SHAPE where he could not let politics enter . . . Many men, far more important, had been urging him to run . . . When I returned to New York, I felt I could confidently spread the word: 'We have a candidate.'"

Hoffman took a "four months' leave of absence" from the Ford Foundation "to devote full time to the campaign." The Citizens for Eisenhower movement, according to Hoffman, was:

". . . vitally important both in the strategy of the campaign and in Eisenhower's political education. Strategically it was the brainchild of Cabot Lodge [CFR], who saw it as an instrument to bring pressure to bear on the Old Guard regulars who controlled the party's machinery, a lever to exercise the power of millions of unorganized and independent and Democrat votes where this power could count."

The campaign then became one to convince Democrats and independents that the Republicans could out-Liberal the Democrats.

The first man who publicly attempted to induce Eisenhower to run for President was Leonard Finder, one of the founders of the Leftwing Anti-Defamation League (ADL), later headed by Dore Schary of the United World Federalists. Finder, who became a "Republican" only in 1952, had wanted Ike to run as a Democrat in 1948. In an article for Colliers of November 3, 1951, titled "Why Ike Will Run," Finder confirmed the fact that he initiated the "Ike for President" movement, and the General wrote him a letter dated January 22, 1948, when he decided not to risk a try for the Presidency that year. In the Colliers article Finder named as Eisenhower supporters such ultra-Leftists as Paul Douglas, Wayne Morse, David Dubinsky, Adolph Berle, James Roosevelt, Claude "Red" Pepper, Chester Bowles, Helen Gahagan Douglas, Jake Arvey, and Adlai Stevenson. Finder said that, in 1948:

"Most Democrats were elated with the news that he had not acted with definite adverseness. But something happened within those few weeks to alter his attitude and make him hold adamant against the nomination."

Finder went on to state, "On every appropriate occasion. General Eisenhower has reiterated that he has no party affiliations." Because Ike "believes in the two-party system," Finder hinted that the General would decide to run as a Republican in 1952. Although he did not rule Eisenhower out as the Democratic candidate in 1952, Finder said that the public was feeling the Democrats had been in office too long. But, said Finder:

"Do these considerations mean that the Democratic nomination is ruled out absolutely? Not at all. At least one situation exists, in my opinion, that would make General Eisenhower accept the Democrat bid . . . That condition would be the Republican nomination of Senator Taft . . . In 1948, Ike had told Finder, If the Republicans were to nominate a reactionary, you know what my answer would have to be."

Finder said of Ike's liberal politics that, while they "might not make as much speed as would satisfy impatient extreme liberals or radicals, it would mean progress forward at an appreciable rate." Even if the ADL for which Mr. Finder spoke were not an extreme Left organization, one could hardly fail to catch the full implication of that statement. Eisenhower would follow the same course as the extreme "liberals or radicals," though less rapidly. Finder stated:

"The election of General Eisenhower on the Republican ticket would strengthen democracy on all sides. At present, the Democratic party claims to be the only haven for Americans who believe more in growing with the future than in retaining the status quo. The Republican party is under the influence of its most conservative members. With General Eisenhower leading the Republicans, that party too would become liberalized."

A more blatant call for the takeover of the Republican party by non-Republicans of the Left would be difficult to imagine.

The fact that it was the extreme Left wing of the Democratic party that wanted Eisenhower to run for the Presidency as a Democrat in 1948 should have given Republicans a clue to Ike's true beliefs. Among those supporting an Eisenhower candidacy were Adlai Stevenson, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Walter Reuther of the ADA. In hearings held on January 7, 1950 before the Select Committee on Lobbying Activities, the following testimony was given:

Chairman: Did the national organization [ADA] actually take a position for Eisenhower for President?

Mr. Loeb: For Eisenhower or Justice [William 0.] Douglas . . . The position taken at the Board meeting in Pittsburgh in April 1948, was for Eisenhower or Douglas.

In his book, Crusade in Europe, Ike revealed that Harry Truman had offered to support him for the presidency in 1948. Eisenhower's chief ghostwriter for Crusade in Europe was Joseph Fels Barnes, who had written One World for Willkie. Barnes, a CFR member, had shortly before this time traveled to Russia with the General's brother Milton. Barnes, a relative of the Rothschild banking clan, has been independently identified as a Communist agent in sworn testimony, on their personal knowledge, by Whittaker-Chambers, Louis Budenz, General Alexander Barmine, Dr. Carl Wittfogel, and Hede Massing. John Gunther, after visiting Eisenhower's headquarters in Paris, confirmed Barnes' role in the writing of Crusade in Europe.

Another behind-the-scenes international banker-kingmaker who worked both sides of the political street was the late Bernard Baruch, who discussed his relationship with Eisenhower in his autobiography:

"The country was fortunate in the choice it was offered in 1952. Adlai Stevenson certainly is one of the outstanding men in public life today. During the campaign, both he and General Eisenhower were kind enough to ask my views. I told them both that in my opinion the control of inflation, the strengthening of our defenses, and the securing of peace were the major goals.

"General Eisenhower and I became close friends after the war. I saw him frequently at Columbia University, as I had when he was Chief of Staff, and developed a warm affection and regard for him. One question which interested us both, and which we often discussed, was the relationship between the individual and his government—how to strike a balance between laissez-faire and paternalism. The discussions between us on this subject, while Eisenhower was president of Columbia, led him to initiate a study of the problem at the University. Out of such conversations I gained, an appreciation of his ability, and of his quick and open mind.

"I myself concluded that; apart from the advantages which might accrue from a change after so long a Democratic tenure. General Eisenhower could best provide the leadership which the attainment of these goals required. I also felt that he could bring unity to the country."

Another backer of Eisenhower for the Democratic candidacy in 1948 was Sidney Hillman, with the CIO. Hillman had been an active revolutionary in the Russian Revolution and was a lifelong promoter of Communist causes in America. In the Atlanta Journal of September 17, 1951, labor columnist Victor Riesel gave details of Eisenhower's relations with Hillman. Riesel was present at the CIO convention when the leftwing union boosted Ike. He said:

"The first Eisenhower for President boom was sounded by union chiefs. Until now that story has never fully been told. It began back in 1945, when the man who drove into Germany as a conquering hero cabled Sidney Hillman to fly into the bombed out Reich . . ."

Soon Eisenhower was invited to speak at the Atlantic City CIO convention in '46—a great coup for the CIO, for Eisenhower was on the paths of glory and a much sought after man. In describing events at the convention Riesel says:

"That night two men were called in by aides of Mr. Hillman. I know. I was one of those [newsmen who were told] . . . that the CIO thought it would be a great thing for the nation if Eisenhower were nominated in '48 . . ."

The reason Ike chose not to run as a Democrat in 1948 could have been the adverse publicity stemming from the fact that, while president of Columbia University, he had granted the Communist government of Poland a Chair of Polish studies at the school. Dr. Arthur P. Coleman, assistant professor of Polish at Columbia, who saw how Poles were being slaughtered by the Communist government, lost the fight to keep Eisenhower from accepting the Red Chair. The Chair was subsidized by a $25,000-a-year grant from the Polish Communist government.

As 1952 approached, the Insiders who had been grooming Ike switched him from potential Democratic candidacy to Republican candidacy, even though he shared none of the traditional GOP philosophy.

Eisenhower was no champion of free enterprise, and showed that he had little if any knowledge of the workings of free economy when he gave his answer to the inflation problem to a group in 1947:

"Inflation could easily be licked any time by the simple action on the part of the industrialists and other business leaders of the nation. They merely decide, by joint voluntary agreement, to forego all profits for a year or two if necessary."

In his article on the CFR, "School for Statesmen," Joseph Kraft quoted a Republican member of the Council as saying: "Whatever General Eisenhower knows about economics he learned at the study group meetings." Another participant at the same group recalls that: "Eisenhower came with a vague predilection in favor of building up Europe. When he left, European aid was a ruling conviction." It was the General's internationalism that endeared him to the Insiders. Thomas Dewey, writing in Look magazine of September 11, 1951, stated:

"I am an internationalist. That's why I am for Eisenhower. Eisenhower is a Republican at heart—but more important than that, he is an internationalist."

Not only did Eisenhower turn out to be a Republican in 1952, but his campaign manager, Henry Cabot Lodge (CFR), went along with the story and claimed that Ike had been a life-long Republicans. The New York Times of May 1, 1951, had written:

"One of the weaknesses of the Eisenhower drive is that the General has never declared whether he was a Republican or Democrat. Another is that no one can say, with certainty, that he would accept the nomination. He is being represented, however, as definitely opposed to the nomination by the Republicans of an "isolationist" candidate like Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio . . .

Robert Sherwood in his book, Roosevelt and Hopkins, said that Eisenhower told him personally in London, in March 1944, "that his family had always been Kansas Republicans, but he himself had never voted in his life." Harry Truman, with whom Eisenhower had been in very close contact, thought right up to the fall of 1951 that Eisenhower would unquestionably accept the Democrat nomination. It was Wendell Willkie all over again.

In a feature story in the New York Times on April 15, 1952, Warren Moscow, that paper's New York political reporter, wrote:

"There is some degree of similarity between the Willkie drive and the movement to nominate General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower. The same financial and publishing interests or their counterparts are behind the Eisenhower movement . . . If they nominate General Eisenhower, it will be because the controlling minority in the convention believes it needs him to win, and because the Eisenhower forces will have whipped up, back home, sentiment approaching the hysteria of the Willkie drive". [Emphasis added.]

The newsletter Human Events noted on July 9, 1952: "For months the big money from New York has been flowing into the Eisenhower movement's coffers . . . Presidents of every big bank in New York save one are behind the General." The treasurer of the Citizens for Eisenhower movement was the ubiquitous Sidney Weinberg, an international banker with Goldman, Sachs, and an intimate of FDR, who had discovered during the Willkie campaign that he could support Republicans as well as Democrats.

Writing in the April 9, 1952 Human Events, scholar Frank Chodorov asked:

"Why is Big Business backing General Eisenhower for the Presidency . . . ? Things being as, they are in this country Big Business looks to Washington for its living; if the next head of the Washington establishment is a spender of proportions. Big Business may hope to live at the cocktail standard to which it has been accustomed by the New-Fair Deal. General Eisenhower is reported to have strong leanings toward the big spender role.

"The other serious contender for the Republican nomination, Senator Taft, is of doubtful value to Big Business . . . he has shown a distaste for the policy called internationalism, which is a euphemism for profligacy, and he seems to be temperamentally unfit for the job of wasting other people's money. It is expected that Mr. Taft, if elected, would be inclined to pull the national purse strings tight . . ."

Putting the individualistic Mr. Taft aside. Big Business could place its bets on any of the present entries in the race and be sure to come up with a winner; that is, with a President who would assure them of a steady intake of the taxpayers' dollars, via contracts, interest payments, loans, etc.

The pre-convention campaign featured rough, tough infighting. Human Events of March 26, 1952, remarked:

"The Wall Street supporters of General Eisenhower were jubilant [about Taft's withdrawal from New Jersey]. Such moneymen as George Whitney [CFR], Clarence Dillon [CFR], Harold Talbott, John Hay Whitney [CFR], and Winthrop Aldrich [CFR] [all Big Bankers], who are supporting Eisenhower and masterminding his campaign, operate as business men do in ruthless competition, forgetting that the primary is a prelude to a General Election and that nothing should be done in the primaries which will have the effect of a cumulative Spite vote in the General Election.

Human Events, which now no longer mentions the words "international bankers," commented strongly on January 23, 1952, on their involvement in denying Taft the nomination:

"Specifically, we can report that pressure is now being applied (by these banking interests) on businessmen who favor Taft but have the misfortune to owe money to these Eastern bankers. We have, on investigation, spotted several cases in which businessmen (leaders in their trans-Appalachian communities) have received communications from their New York creditors, urging them to join pro-Eisenhower committees and to raise or contribute funds thereto. These debtors happen to favor Taft and/or MacArthur and are not happy about the communication. For, they want no trouble with the gentlemen who hold the notes. At this moment, we cannot as yet ascertain just whether or not the debtors will surrender their political independence.

"First of all, it is being eloquently argued that, on the plane of principle, Taft can be urged to make an issue of this. Bankers and financial interests which play ball with and profit from the Fair Deal (in contrast to those who engage in "straight" banking) are just as much a menace to the weal of the country as Socialists, Communists and corruption practitioners. These elements of high finance played a role, and a big one, in getting us into both World Wars. What they are up to now should be discussed in the public forum."

Naturally Eisenhower had all the Insider news media going for him, including some newspapers, such as the New York Post, owned by Dorothy Schiff, granddaughter of Jacob Schiff, the financier of the Russian Revolution, and the Washington Post, owned by the late financier Phillip Graham (CFR). The two Posts support a Republican every third blue moon. Even John Cowles' (CFR) Minneapolis Star supported Ike; and in its March 19, 1952, issue, it revealed that Minnesota's leftwing Democratic farmer-labor voters were supporting Eisenhower too. Historian George Morgenstern commented in the October 8, 1952, Human Events:

Yet, sight unseen, and even in advance of any personal profession of party attachment, the General's candidacy was espoused by an unlikely set of New Deal newspapers and syndicated columnists, all declaring the sudden conviction that the nation's well-being demanded that the two-party system be preserved through a change of administrations.

Although Eisenhower had the support of the Insiders' mass media, he did not have the support of anti-Communist General Douglas MacArthur. Columnist George Sokolsky wrote: "He [MacArthur] supports Taft; he opposes Eisenhower; . . . the international bankers can exercise no influence on General Mac Arthur."

Standing in the way of the Insiders' attempts to steal away with the Republican party was Robert A. Taft. Historian George Morgenstern describes this man of impeccable principle as follows:

"Three times Mr. Taft picked his party off the floor following defeat and put it together again. Morally and intellectually he was its unchallenged leader, and in himself personified the values which the party was supposed to represent. Miss Dorothy Thompson was never more cogent than when, in expressing the outlook of Taft's followers, she quoted a carpenter who urged her to support Taft, and described in his terms what those values were:

"We are the people who pay our taxes even when we hate what the government does with them; who regard it as a disgrace to expect our fellow citizens to support us; who believe we should get what we earn but earn what we get; whose sons are the first to volunteer in America's wars and who expect if we get in them to win them; and who know, darn well nobody is ever going to protect America but Americans. We are the Vanishing Americans, pushed around by big business, big labor, big government and big military. And if we lose this election we are finished. Eisenhower won't win it for us even if he wins. He'll win it for another branch of the same people who are running the country now."

In Taft's book, A Foreign Policy for America, he expressed this simple premise, which made him anathema to the Insiders: "The ultimate purpose of our foreign policy must be to protect the liberty of the people of the United States." This attitude had led people like Arthur Hays Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times, to say he was supporting Eisenhower and opposing Taft for the Presidential nomination "because it is so frightening at [sic] the thought of Mr. Taft."

As the time for the Republican convention approached, Taft apparently had enough delegates to win the nomination on the first ballot, while Eisenhower was at least 150 delegates short. The Insiders were desperate and needed a gimmick to capture a few crucial delegates from Taft. The opportunity presented itself in Texas. They devised a scheme whereby they would ignore the legally elected Taft delegates.

The ploy was to hold rump meetings to which they would invite Democrats who had no intention of voting for any Republican in the November election, and have this illegal body "elect" Eisenhower delegates, who would then try to unseat the Taft delegates at the convention.

The Eisenhower managers ran advertisements in Texas newspapers, and mailed out vast quantities of postcards addressed to "Occupant," which invited Democrats to come to Republican party meetings and "vote" for Eisenhower. These ads stated, "You are not pledged to support the nominee of the Republican party nor does it prohibit you from voting in the July Democratic primary nor does it prohibit you from voting for whomever you please in the November election."

Such a procedure was clearly contrary to Texas law. When Taft and his supporters protested this illegal action, one of the Insiders' hatchet men came up with a brainstorm—accuse Taft of stealing delegates! Of course the Insiders were trying to steal the Republican Party, but that fact was lost in a deluge of propaganda from anti-Taft newspapers who accused Taft of the "big steal." Masked bandits with guns paraded the streets of Chicago carrying placards reading "Taft Steals Votes." Henry Cabot Lodge (CFR), Sherman Adams (CFR), and the other Eisenhower managers were screaming "Dishonesty" and "Fraud!" to the media, which treated the charges as if they were true. Like 1940, it was great show biz.

When the illegally elected Eisenhower delegates arrived at the Republican national convention in Chicago, the job was to get them officially seated in place of the Taft delegates, in order to take away Taft's narrow margin of victory. By high-pressure propaganda and hypocritical bleating about the moral issue, the Insiders brought about a change in the rules for seating delegates under which every previous convention had functioned. Although this rules change was contrary to common sense as well as to every principle of parliamentary procedure, it was called the "Fair Play Amendment."

Once the rules were changed, the second battle at the '52 convention was over the seating of the contested delegates. By promising Earl Warren the first appointment to the Supreme Court and Richard Nixon the Vice Presidency, the Insiders persuaded the California delegation without hearing any of the evidence—to vote to expel the regular Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas delegations and seat the Eisenhower delegates.

When the convention opened, the Taft headquarters had signed pledges from 604 delegates, the narrow majority he needed out of 1203. Eisenhower had only 400 plus. But behind the scenes, wheeling and dealing by Insiders whittled away at Taft's majority and cost him the margin of victory. The Taft headquarters received reports of delegates who were bodily put on the train for home, leaving their alternates to vote for Ike. Delegates were threatened with loss of their jobs and calling of their bank loans unless their vote was for Eisenhower. Money flowed in great quantities everywhere. The Chicago Tribune on July 11 summed up the convention like this:

"While yelling, 'Steal!', they stole. While piously condemning evil, they entered the bagnio with it. With holy airs, they prejudged the issues, and with piety—and a lot of patronage they cried corruption while corrupting their own small souls. It was a sickening spectacle.

"On Monday the cry was 'Fair play.' On Wednesday all pretense of fairness was forsaken. On Monday the old rules of 1948 were bad. On Wednesday the bad old rules and precedents of 1948 were cited by the same people, and now they were good. The rule of seating Delegates in 1948 was lamentable on Monday. On Wednesday the precedent of 1948 was invoked to seat Delegates, so long as they were for Eisenhower.

"Without hearing any of the evidence the convention overruled the credentials committee, overruled the Republican National Committee, threw out the Taft delegations from Georgia, Texas, and Louisiana, and seated Eisenhower delegates. Ike won on the first ballot."

The big question in Chicago was not a Southern delegation "steal." It was the question of whether or not the GOP would become de facto an arm of a permanent Democratic Administration. Eisenhower forces had made great capital out of the image slogan, "Taft Can't Win." In retrospect it is quite clear Taft indeed could have won in 1952, as he probably would have done in 1948. The issues and the time were not merely ripe for a Republican victory, but overripe. Even Liberal commentators like Lubell acknowledged that Taft could have harvested a victory over Stevenson as Eisenhower did, although no doubt by a smaller margin.

There was, nevertheless, a grain of truth in the argument: Taft was simply a less merchandisable item than the returning war hero, Ike. The "Can't Win" slogan was, in part, a reflection of the new age of image politics, which the Insiders use so masterfully. The slogan itself was an example of image politics and was an exercise in self-fulfilling prophecy, a variation on the theme that has been developed by Liberal Republicans for use against Conservatives in every intra-party combat since 1940.

In a memorandum written by Taft in late 1952, circulated privately among his close friends, and published in the December 2, 1959 Human Events, giving reasons why he lost the nomination, Taft said:

"First, it was the power of the New York financial interests and a large number of businessmen subject to New York influence, who selected General Eisenhower as their candidate at least a year ago. There was a strong and substantial minority of Taft supporters among business leaders, but they were a minority, particularly in the East. Second, four-fifths of the influential newspapers in the country were opposed to me continuously and vociferously and many turned themselves into propaganda sheets for my opponent.

Thus did the Insiders deal a possibly mortal blow to the two-party system in the United States, while denying the Presidency to one of the great men of American history and guaranteeing to themselves hundreds of billions of future taxpayers' dollars.