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The Conservative Future
The Old Guard has worked out—mostly under the guidance of Arizona's Senator Barry Goldwater—a case against Ike based on a highly selective list of statistics. Since 1952, says that case:
∙ Republican membership in the House has dropped from 221 to 201, in the Senate from 49 to 47.
∙ Only Ohio and West Virginia have replaced Democratic governors with Republicans. Democrats have ousted Republicans from the statehouses of Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Washington.
∙ Democrats have taken over nearly a dozen state legislatures. Nationwide in January 1957, there were 141 fewer Republican state senators than in January 1953, and 308 fewer G.O.P. state representatives.
∙ In 1956, Eisenhower's ideological coattails were of decisive help in only three U.S. congressional races (Hartford, Conn., Jersey City and Wheeling, W. Va.) and one U.S. Senate contest (Prescott Bush's Connecticut victory).
The Old Guard conclusion: Ike won despite his Modern Republicanism, not because of it, and the future of the Republican Party lies in the Old Guard brand of conservatism. "I'm convinced that the American mind is a conservative mind," says Arizona's Goldwater, who has suddenly arrived (after his major Senate speech denouncing Eisenhower Republicanism—TIME, April 22) as the Old Guard's most articulate spokesman. "The workingman is the new capitalist. Conservatives are going to win the next election, and the group which wins the 1958 elections will control the 1960 elections."
To explain away the fact that most of them were elected on a support-Eisenhower platform, the Old Guardsmen make a final point in their case: somehow or other, since 1956 Ike has "changed" because "they" (i.e., the "men around Eisenhower") persuaded the President to forsake his solid Republicanism in favor of a leftward course featuring such "giveaways" as school construction, health reinsurance and expanded foreign aid.
The Facts of Life
The Eisenhower Republicans state their case against the Old Guard in shorter and simpler terms. They believe that the social legislation of the New Deal is a fact of U.S. history, that social security, for instance, is as basic to the national fabric as free enterprise. They see gradually expanding Federal Government as the price of rapidly expanding national growth, and foreign aid as the price of international leadership. In addition to the top administrative officials of Government and a sturdy bloc in Congress, Eisenhower Republicanism includes the major elected Republicans who are closest to the voters: the 19 G.O.P. governors, not one of whom has openly joined the.Old Guard attack. It also includes the delegates who have whipped the Old Guard at every national party convention since 1936. And in a certain sense, it includes the 35,575,420 Americans (57.3% of those voting) who cast their ballots for Ike in 1956.