OCR Text |
Show WHERE HAS THERE BEEN FAILURE? The Salt Lake Tribune is bitterly opposed to any proposition favoring the direct primary, because, as that paper says, "there has been a dismal failure e cry where." Where has there -been failure? We recall that the Tribune condemned the popular presidential primaries last spring because "all the Democrats in California and Washington invaded the Republican Re-publican primaries and helped defeat the Taft delegates." The Tribune at that time knew -its argument was based on nothing more than a supposition of a deeply prejudiced mind and that there was no evidence to prove its charge except that Roosevelt Roose-velt overwhelmingly defeated Taft. Since then the election returns have been received from those states and they furnish a complete refutation of the Tribune's statement state-ment In California Roosevelt has as many as the combined Taft and Wilson forces, and in Washington almost the same condition exists. What can a paper like the Tribune gain by keeping up these false representations? Eventually it must yield to the new condition condi-tion tf)at demands the doing away with the old ma.ssprimary and convention tlmt have been the bulwark of tile waif heeler and political po-litical manipulator. i The Tribune has made one very persistent argument against popular pop-ular primaries, namely, that the primaries often allow a minority candidate to be named. This, the Tribune declares, is intolerable. If that be true, then the entire system of popular government is without merit. In the state of Utah we are about to see a governor take office for a second term who was elected by only a small per cent over one-third of the total vote of the state, and in the nation Woodrow Wilson becomes President on a 40 per cent vote. |