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In the community center across the street, Ikemen raised bitter placards reading "Rob With Bob" and "Graft with Taft." Then they opened their own convention with a prayer by the Rev. N. O. Carrington: "We like Ike. God likes Ike. We will nominate and elect him." Shouting Ike instead of aye, the Ikemen instructed their own delegation to the National Convention to cast 33 votes for Ike and five for Taft (from the districts that he really won). Before they adjourned, Harris County Chairman Ingraham shamefacedly walked in to say "I regret the type of campaign that has been waged for Mr. Taft in Texas . . . His Texas men have stolen, misrepresented, and have been dishonorable."
Unshared Disgust. The top men of the Taft organization didn't seem to share Ingraham's disgust. Campaign Manager David Sinton Ingalls, who with Southern Strategist B. Carroll Reece had been in Mineral Wells through it all, said: "We can't have Democrats telling us who to nominate." Bob Taft said the factional fight in Texas existed long before the
Taft-Eisenhower struggle began, but "we helped bring it to a head."
This week, as politicians and pundits mulled over what happened in Texas, many had doubts whether the points are that strong in Taft's favor. To seat their Texas delegation in Chicago, the Taft forces will have to drag a spectacle ^of machine control and backroom politics right down before the glare of television cameras and the eyes of 1,800 reporters. Taftmen control the Republican National Committee and probably will have a majority of the Credentials Committee (see box), but when the credentials fight gets to the convention floor, Taft will need a cast-iron grip on his delegates to keep some from repudiating the Texas steal.
-The term steamroller was applied in U.S. politics in 1912, when President William Howard Taft, with organization support much like his son has in 1952, rolled over ex-President Theodore Roosevelt in the Republican National Convention at Chicago. As the Taft machine crunched ahead, Clark Grier, a Roosevelt delegate from Georgia, rose and shouted: "The steamroller is exceeding the speed limit."