The Daily Alaska Empire

NEW TEST FOR
OLD GUARD OF
REPUBLICANS

Senate Side of 1934 Political Picture to Be Considered

By HERBERT PLUMMER
WASHINGTON, Aug. 9. - Aside from the fact that Congressional elections of next year will be highly significant because all the new crop of Democratic Representatives must run again, the Senate side of the political picture must come in for consideration.

In the tidal wave of votes that swept Franklin Roosevelt into the presidency in 1932, the Republican Old Guard of the Senate was almost engulfed.
That old wheelhorse of Republicanism, Jim Watson, of Indiana, was shunted from a place in the national spotlight that dates back as far as 1894. Reed Smoot, dean of the Senate and the epitome of G. O. P. standpatism, went down to defeat before a young professor in Utah, a novice at politics.
And George Moses, the scintillating wit and satirist of the Old Guard, fell before the attack of a newcomer in national politics in New Hampshire by the name of Fred Brown.

Hors De Combat
These were the major casualties the Old Guard suffered in the fall of 1932. There were others, such as Glenn of Illinois, Bingham of Connecticut and Thomas of Idaho, all Republican stalwarts.
Next year another section of the Old Guard must face the electorate. What will happen to them?
Glance down the list of those that are up for re-election in 1934. There are 17 Republicans, 14 Democrats and one Farmer-Laborite.
Heading the list is Austin of Vermont, as solid in his Republicanism as the granite for which his state is famed. There's Fess of Ohio, Republican keynoter at the Kansas City convention in 1928.
Hale of Maine, who occupies the seat in the senate his father once had, is another. Dr. Hatfield of West Virginia must run.
Then there's Hebert of Rhode Island, eastern campaign manager for Herbert Hoover in the 1932 Presidential campaign, to say nothing of Dave Reed of Pennsylvania.
There are others such as Kean of New Jersey, Patterson of Missouri, Townsend of Delaware, Vandenberg of Michigan and Walcott of Connecticut whose politics are as regularly Republican as the clock.
How will the "new deal" affect the political futures of these Senators? What will happen between now and the nominating and election campaigns of 1934?
They all admit at the present that the great game of politics is suffering from the doldrums. The wisest of them are waiting for the breaks. Some, of course, already have started campaigning, but it consists for the most part in mending political fences in an unobtrusive sort of way.
But 1934 after all, is not so far away. They must get under way soon and make up for lost time.