GOPossibilities (Cont'd)
Auctioned off in Washington this week was the privilege of playing host to the 1936 Republican National Convention. Cried Chicago: "$150,000." Cried Kansas City: "$150,000." Cried Cleveland: "$150,000." Hearing no further bids, the National Committee knocked the convention down to Cleveland for $150,000 and a presumably improved chance of snaring Ohio's 26 electoral votes. Opening date: June 9.
Thus the time and place of theGOPresidential nomination for 1936 were settled. Almost the only certain fact about the nominee remained that he would not be a Chinaman. But with full allowance for hell, high water and the half-year to come, professional Republican politicians and influential amateurs were more interested than ever in three names :Landon, Knox, Hoover.
It is reasonably doubtful that the nation would have voted the 30th and 31st U. S. Presidents into office so enthusiastically if those gentlemen had previously changed their official names to J. Cal Coolidge and Herb C. Hoover. Nonetheless a stream of important visitors, interested in helping make a 33rd President of the U. S., made their way during the past fortnight to the door of the Kansas Governor who was christened Alfred and now calls himself Alf. In the Press the kind of build-up which experienced partisans know how to produce for a favorite made the Landon name loom larger & larger on the list of GOPossibilities for 1936.
Political bird dogs quivered at the scent of a Hoover-Landon deal week before last when John Hamilton, Republican National Committee general counsel, and the following Hoover associates trod on each other's heels at the Governor's mansion: one-time Vice President Charles Curtis; Mark L. Requa, California National Committeeman; Henry J. Allen, Kansas' onetime Governor and U. S. Senator; William M. Jardine, Coolidge Secretary of Agriculture and Hoover Minister to Egypt.
All except Committeemen Hamilton and Requa, officially discreet, departed with puffs for the Landon boom. To the growing picture of Governor Landon as a nickel-betting, budget-balancing Great Economizer, Republican Allen last week added his dab: "In my judgment, the time has come again for a stingy man to be President of the U. S. Governor Alf M. Landon is a stingy man."