REPUBLICANS: Never Say Die

“I would be very pleased if we get a majority in the Senate,” said Republican National Chairman Meade Alcorn last week to reporters at the White House. “But I have to be candid with you and candid with myself. I don’t think it’s in the cards for this time.”

As a candid forecaster, Alcorn scored well. The third of the Senate seats open this year were last filled in the piping Eisenhower year of 1952. Republicans, now a one-vote minority and short of coattails, have 21 seats to defend, while the Democrats risk only 13—six of them safe in one-party Southern States. But since a party chairman is supposed to talk like a combination coach and cheerleader, Alcorn sounded treasonably candid to the faithful.

Said the President, braced at his news conference with his chairman’s lack of never-say-die: “Now for my part. I never yet admitted defeat on any fight I had to fight. I once had to participate in a high-school team that played against a college, and we still made a pretty good show of it.”