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Show , . f Political Pros' Will Oppose Stassen Former Minnesota Governor Is Playing Lone Wolf Role By BAUKIIAGE News Analyst and Commentator. CI his is the third of a series on the men most talked about as candidates for the Republican presidential nomination). WASHINGTON. When the bakers were down in Washington Washing-ton sweating out a grain conservation program for their industry, in-dustry, my friend from Minnesota, Harry W. Zinsmaster, who is what the personal column calls a "frequent visitor" in the capital, gave a little luncheon for his colleagues and some press and radio men. We had finished eating and were gathered around to listen to the bakers' bak-ers' troubles when suddenly the door opened and 220 pounds of blond, smiling, smil-ing, political potentiality burst upon us. f come president, he might build up a strong personal following and thus get a stranglehold on the Republican Repub-lican party. Conventional candidates don't commit themselves too heavily. His supporters claim that Stassen is a middle-of-the-roader, a little to the left. But it is not too much his liber- Our host shouted a happy "Hello, ' Harold!" then turned and announced: an-nounced: "Gentlemen, the next President of the United States." I daresay most Minnesota Republicans Repub-licans will say "aye" to that. What the rest of the country says is awaited with interest by the candidate. candi-date. I suppose I have had 50 people ask me about Harold Stassen. "Why hasn't Stassen a chance?" they query. Most observers seem to agree that if he has a chance, it's a pretty slim one to date. ' N" - f "-i ill m The reason Is always al-ways the same: The professional politicians don't want him. Not because he's a political "unknown." He could hardly be called that Sure he took the job of county chairman at the age of 21. He was elected governor of Min- HAROLD STASSEN Does he have a chance? ality to which the politicians object. I doubt if any practical politician expects us to turn back the clock. But in his highly unorthodox campaigning, cam-paigning, Stassen has violated two rules. One, by announcing himself early in the present campaign. Today he is the only official candidate can-didate tor the presidential nomination. nomi-nation. Two, he has made and he repeats re-peats sharp criticism of the Republican Re-publican program. As Roscoe Drummond of the Christian Science Monitor puts it, "If they pick him to ride the elephant, ele-phant, they'll have to get a new elephant." Certainly. Stassen has hinted this was necessary when he said the Republican program must be more constructive, more dynamic. dy-namic. He doesn't consult with anybody any-body else when he announces how to make it so. That's part of the lone-wolf lone-wolf complex. He comes up from the soil with a dirt-farmer father. He worked his way through college. He has a good military record as deputy chief of staff to Admiral Halsey. He is younger than Dewey (Stassen is 39), and taller than Taft a sandy-haired, sandy-haired, slow-spoken and deliberate six-footer. Baukhage nesota three times, could have been senator from that state, had he wanted the job. In his case, it's not so much that he's a newcomer as it is the way he came up. That way is characteristic of his whole campaign, and two words describe it: "Lone wolf." The situation favored Stassen when he forced his way into the gubernatorial race in 1938. Minnesota Min-nesota was in a bad way. There was vandalism and corruption, and the Farmer-Labor party, which had held a stiff grip on the state, was disintegrating through its own weakness and graft. Stassen entered the race against the wishes of the Republican Re-publican Old Guard, but he eventually forced them to help him to some degree. It was largely his own efforts, however, how-ever, that elected him. In other words, "he butted into the governorship," according to old guard critics. Others say he did it merely as a step to the presidency, and that it was part of 'his overweening over-weening ambition the same thing they say about Governor Dewey of New York. But the old guard fears Stassen's type of ambition more than Dewey's. They fear it because they feel1 that should Stassen be- K IK ! Vandcnberg Won't Fight Early this year, according to credible authority, a secret poll was taken by Republican senators as to their informal, off-the-record preference pref-erence for a presidential candidate. Sen. Arthur Hen-ick Vandenberg of Michigan won it. In the same month, the senator made a statement in a national vert. He was once frankly an isolationist. Today he has converted con-verted many others, and I believe be-lieve that no single man has done more than he to break down the provincial attitude, especially in the Middlewest, which before World War II prevented pre-vented America from taking leadership in world affairs leadership which might have postponed, if not entirely prevented, pre-vented, the war. I do not believe that he is actually eliminated from the nomination, but we can be certain he will not fight for the job. He had the high vote at the Republican convention of 1940 when the Willkie blitz struck. Vandenberg's support , of bi-partisan policy doesn't mean that he gives a blank check to the administration. adminis-tration. He favors the Marshall plan and aid to Greece and Turkey, but he refused to recognize that aid as the "Truman Doctrine," insisting it was not a doctrine at alL magazine in which he said he thought it was easier to run for president than not to run. He explained ex-plained how diffi cult it was to deny that one is a candidate, candi-date, once the story got started. He mentioned the question ques-tion of the "draff and expressed an .-. . .. . - . ..- . opinion similar to that of Roy Roberts Vandenberg of the Kansas City Star in connection connec-tion with Gen. Dwight Eisenhower namely, that there had never been a real "draft" in his day. Vandenberg Vanden-berg said that, of course, no man would refuse the nomination if it were handed to him as an accomplished accom-plished fact. He concluded his remarks with this statement: "1 am not a candidate. I do not expect or wish to be a candidate. I shall seek no convention delegates or approve of others in this behalf. I think my place of service Is filling out my tenure in the senate." sen-ate." Few men's stature has Increased as Vandenberg's has as a result of his participation in international affairs. af-fairs. I think it is fair to say that Vandcnberg not only made non-oartisan non-oartisan foreign policy possible, but "that his efforts in carrying out the non-partisan principle made a unified uni-fied foreign policy itself possible. A part of Vandenberg's influence influ-ence in the field of foreign affairs af-fairs is due to the fact that he ha? the enthusiasm of a coo- |