events, as he died of cancer that year. His death led to a temporary loss of leadership

for conservatives within the party and further weakened their already inferior position.

 The dissertation draws from the papers and correspondence of Dewey, Taft, and

their top lieutenants as they plotted and executed their strategies to secure the

presidential nomination of the Republican Party in 1948 and 1952. It analyzes the

public and private negotiations within these groups and their relationships with state

and local party organizations around the nation. Tracing the sentiments of the party

leadership at both the national and grass-roots level highlights the disjuncture between

the elites and the rank and file, and shows the efforts of Taftites to regain control of

their party after World War II. Chapter 1 gives a brief overview of the party structure

and details the aftermath of the presidential election of 1944. Dewey lost by a wide

margin in the Electoral College but a two-percent shift in seven key traditionally

Republican states would have given him a victory over Roosevelt. As a result, Dewey

adopted a new program designed to appeal to wavering Democratic voters. Dewey's

campaign manager, Herbert Brownell, also modernized and expanded the party

machinery after the election and kept the party viable after the war ended. Chapter 2

explores the conservative takeover of the RNC by Tennessee Representative B.

Carroll Reece. An ardent Taft supporter, Reece used the publicity organs created by

Brownell to mount a conservative program that gave the GOP its first congressional

majority since 1930. The remainder of the chapter lays out the conservative positions

in five key areas through legislative initiatives undertaken by the 80th Congress. These

programs, civil rights, federal aid to education, public housing, labor relations, and the

Tidelands oil controversy, show the major points of contention between the Taft and

Dewey factions and the efforts of conservative legislators to reaffirm the Republican

Party as a conservative party. Chapter 3 goes through the 1948 election cycle. Here,