REPUBLICANS: Suspense

All across the U.S., Republican organization leaders lived in a state of hopeful suspense. They were sure that Ike would run—but what if?—oh, they were sure that he would run. Asked what his organization was doing in this tense period, Michigan’s Republican State Chairman John Feikens spoke for the brethren everywhere: “We’re praying—that’s the first thing we’re doing.”

Amid the prayers there was some rustling in the church. In Manhattan Vice President Richard Nixon was the honor guest and principal speaker at the black-tie Lincoln Day Dinner of the National Republican Club. Nixon seized the occasion for the highest-powered G.O.P. attack on the leading Democratic presidential candidates to date. Adlai Stevenson, Tennessee’s Senator Estes Kefauver and New York’s Governor Averell Harriman are “three candidates in search of a crisis,” said he. Then, singling out Front Runner Stevenson, Nixon added: “Unless he changes his present course, it will begin to look as if the state which gave the nation Abraham Lincoln, the great rail-splitter of 1860, has produced in Adlai Stevenson the great hairsplitter of 1956.”

An Echoing Phrase. But it was another phrase in Nixon’s speech that riled his perennial Democratic enemies and nettled Republican friends too. Outlining the Eisenhower Administration’s accomplishments (“Prosperity without war, full employment outside of uniform, and security without regimentation and control”), Nixon spoke of great gains in civil rights. Said he: “And, speaking for a unanimous Supreme Court, the great Republican Chief Justice, Earl Warren, has ordered an end to racial segregation in the nation’s schools.” Northern Democrats soon charged that Nixon was dragging the high court into politics; Southern Democrats cried that his statement proved the school decision was political. The New York Times’s even-handed Pundit Arthur Krock, who praised Nixon’s “otherwise well-documented account” of the Administration’s accomplishments, wondered why the offending phrase had been allowed to appear in a carefully prepared text.

In the wake of Nixon’s statement there rose another wave of speculation (mostly by journalists and Democrats) that Eisenhower, if he runs again, might drop Nixon from the ticket. Next question: If not Nixon, who? In Washington, as guest of honor at a National Press Club lunch. Massachusetts Governor Christian A. (for Archibald) Herter (TIME, Feb. 20) was asked: “Would you accept No. 2 place on the ticket?” Pointedly, Herter replied: “I would like to be excused from answering that. The President is entitled to have the man he chooses . . . Dick Nixon is a good friend of mine.”

“Knowing the Eisenhowers . . .” Of all Republican presidential hopefuls, none was in more suspense than California’s U.S. Senator William Fife Knowland. After the favorable report on Eisenhower’s health, Knowland relaxed his unofficial pre-convention campaigning somewhat, but did nothing to discourage the entry of his name in several state primaries, e.g., Minnesota, Illinois. Knowland’s was a difficult stand: he wanted to be running full speed if the President said no, and sitting in the cheering section if the President said yes.

Meanwhile, the Republicans were getting precious little organization work done. Des Moines G.O.P. Leader Allen Whitfield voiced the general attitude when he said that his organization was “treading water until we hear from Ike.” Said Colorado’s Republican State Chairman Edgar Elliff: “To do anything before then would simply be like jumping up and down in the same place.” But in Manhattan the revived National Citizens for Eisenhower organization was busily appointing new state chairmen and assuring them that the President will run. At a Republican dinner in El Centro, Calif, (for Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson) an attorney from Tacoma, Wash, offered the G.O.P. some special words of assurance. Said Edgar Eisenhower, brother of Ike: “Knowing the Eisenhowers and the way their minds work, I think he will run. I believe he hasn’t finished his job, and until he does finish the job, he’ll stay on.”