quick 1949 throw-away
While the liberals celebrated, the Republicans meditated, and their conclusions made them just so many floats in the triumphal parade for Fair Dealer Harry Truman. “Does the Republican Party Have a Future?” asked the grandson of Henry Cabot Lodge, and his answer was affirmative only if the party established a “liberal record.” The Saturday Evening Post, of all magazines, stripped away the main argument Deweyites had been using to console themselves; a heavier vote, the Post’s analyst argued, would have meant only a more resounding victory for the Democrats. Nobody, it seemed, was a conservative any more. Ex-Speaker Joe Martin discovered that the GOP was too full of “plutocrats.” Senator Taft lectured a Republican caucus on the wisdom of backing “welfare measures”, and Senator Wherry let it be known that “fundamentalist” rather than “conservative” was the proper adjective for his philosophy. Thomas Dewey used the occasion of his first major statement after the election to tongue-lash Republicans who “try to go back to the 19th century, or even to the 1920s.” They “ought to … try to get elected in a typical American community and see what happens to them,” said Dewey, who spoke with considerable authority on the subject.
—- Eric F Goldman Rendezvous With Destiny
A History of Modern American Reform, 1952
Just a passing thought word alterations in the “liberal” / “progressive” dichotemy (words have just been dropped on us interchangable, aren’t they? Latter adopted after the former lost favor. Actually it is that reason that I tend to cringe whenever I hear or read the word “progressive”, unless referring to something from the first two decades of the last century.)
Of course, the conservatives in 1948 quickly caught sight of Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon, and they were all set.