Knowland at the Ready

The right wing of the Republican Party now has 1) its issue, 2) its strategy, 3) its candidate for 1960. The issue: Government economy as a popular expression of a growing conservatism. The strategy: to take over the party after showing strength in the 1958 elections. (Such Old Guardsmen as Indiana's Senator Bill Jenner and Nevada's Senator "Molly" Malone appear safe for reelection, while some Eisenhower Republicans are by no means sure bets.)

The candidate: Senate Republican Leader William Fife Knowland, who would like to spring from California's governorship (over Incumbent Goodwin Knight's dead body) to the White House--but, governorship or no, is available.

Bill Knowland's intentions are unmistakable. Since early this year he has averaged two outside-Washington speaking appearances a week. Up to 1957, Knowland always made a point of boasting about his record of support for the Eisenhower Administration. But Presidential Candidate Knowland carefully positions himself to the right of Dwight Eisenhower (and Richard Nixon) on nearly all major issues. He aggressively opposes the Eisenhower budget, wants to cut it by $3 billion, slash foreign aid by $500 million (yet he embraces as his special overseas charges some half a dozen Asian nations--ranging from Nationalist China to Pakistan--which absorb a substantial chunk of foreign aid).

He has turned away from the President on school construction, which he implicitly accepted as part of the Republican platform. He is reaching for Joe McCarthy's old followers, never misses a good chance to talk about his antiCommunism, argues strongly against aid for such nations as Yugoslavia and Poland (whose differences with the Soviet Union the Administration would like to exploit with foreign aid).

Pundit Walter Lippmann wondered last week whether it is "good public morals" for the Republican leader of the Senate to oppose the Republican President of the U.S. But Bill Knowland has no known pangs of conscience. He has always made it abundantly clear that his primary obligation is to the Republican Party, not to Ike. Even so, it is the Republican Party that Knowland may in the end hurt most, for, as Conservative Columnist David Lawrence (see PRESS) said last week, "If the leadership of President Eisenhower is forsaken by an influential bloc in his party, the 'modern Republicans' will have no place to go in 1960 but with the Democrats. They will prefer a 'modern Democrat' to a Republican who deserted Eisenhower's leadership."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.