REPUBLICANS: In the Big Tent

With Congress in recess and President Truman a sure thing for the Democratic nomination in 1948, the nation’s cartoonists turned their pens on the nation’s best political show—the scramble for the Republican nomination. Convention time was still ten months off. But in country clubs and barrooms, from picnic grounds and hotel rooms, the hum of politicking rose above the land as candidates angled for delegates.

Cartoonist Jack Lambert of the New Dealing Chicago Sun needled New York’s Governor Thomas E. Dewey with a sly “The Cat’s Got His Tongue” (see cut). At the American Legion’s convention last week, Front-Runner Dewey publicly endorsed universal military training, thus evoking from Legionnaire Harold E. Stassen the comment that it was nice to hear Mr. Dewey taking a stand on something.

At Murray Bay, Quebec, where he is vacationing, Ohio’s solemn Bob Taft got ready for his test swing through the Far West in mid-September, a serious undertaking in which Scripps-Howard’s H. M. Talburt saw some humorous overtones.