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Senate Republican Conference Chairman Eugene Millikin and House Republican Campaign Committee Chairman Richard Simpson. Leader of the unsuccessful fight against the St. Lawrence Seaway was Maryland's Republican Senator John Marshall Butler, and one of his most active allies was Senate Assistant Majority Leader Leverett Saltonstall, an Eisenhower Republican. North Dakota's Republican Senator Milton Young heads the effort to scuttle the Eisenhower farm program. Such Republicans as Nevada's Senator George Malone and North Dakota's Senator William Langer vote against the Administration as a matter of course. The President was able to muster only 14 Republican Senators on the key vote against the Bricker amendment. ¶ Musing on the Republican dilemma, a veteran Republican Senator, who is against renewal of reciprocal trade treaties, said last week: "Eisenhower is telling all of us to suddenly reverse our field and vote directly opposite to the way we've been voting for years—and getting re-elected." Then, with deep conviction, the Senator added: "The first business of a politician is to get elected, and the second business is to get re-elected." The sense that it is an important part of the politician's business to have his party win—as well as to win himself—is not strong in this Senator, or in many of his colleagues.
¶A Republican Representative from western Kansas fervently believes that Calvin Coolidge was the last solid, conservative Republican leader and that v Dwight Eisenhower is a puppet of Americans for Democratic Action. The Congressman plans to run this year on an anti-Administration platform, although he is not yet sure that he would be wise to attack the President personally. Says he: "You can cuss Eisenhower, and people get sore. You can say the Administration stinks, and they cheer." The Kansan voted only about 35% pro-Eisenhower last year, and his showing this year will be about the same. For a while, he planned to vote for the St. Lawrence Seaway. Said he: "It won't make five votes difference in my district whether I vote for or against it, so I'll probably vote for it. That way people can't accuse me of not being loyal to my party." But he must have recounted and found a ten vote difference because, although his own convictions on the St. Lawrence were nil, he ended up by turning against the President again last week. ¶ Even New Jersey's Senator Alexander Smith, usually an Eisenhower Republican, last week displayed this same lack of party responsibility. As chairman of the Senate Labor Committee, Smith had the duty of helping steer to Senate passage the Administration's Taft-Hartley revision. But after the losing vote—which was a real Administration, and therefore a Republican, defeat—Smith warbled: "I'm just as cheerful as a dickeybird."