jeopardized the future of the nation. While electoral results disproved this in 1944,

Reece, Taft, and their allies held this notion as a non-debatable truth. This partially

reflects a disjuncture between Republican elites and the grassroots immediately after

World War II and also affirms their belief in the Republican policies of the 1920s.

Rather than clear out all of Brownell's staff and reshape the party completely, Reece

moved to change the message from headquarters using the same organization that

Brownell had built. Dewey remained the titular party leader but conservatives gained

a louder voice in the party organization and hoped to reconstruct the political identity

as oppositional and conservative.14

 With Taft influencing the policy decisions of the RNC, Reece became the

public face of the national party apparatus and the most vocal proponent of its agenda

during the 1946 election cycle. The Republicans had not controlled Congress since

1932 and now faced the daunting opposition of a majority party that had kept public

support for over a decade and had prosecuted a successful war effort. Reece's first

duty as chairman was the creation and promotion of a nationwide platform. Calling

upon his conservative beliefs and the rhetoric of anti-Communism, Reece crafted a

strategy based primarily on fear of communism, but one that also included a viable

and consistent legislative agenda. In his first nationwide speech as Chairman, Reece

invoked the red specter by saying, "It seems to me that the pink puppets in control of

the federal bureaucracy have determined to prevent American productive capacity

from supplying the needs of the people." Some members of the press expressed alarm

while others, including the editors of the Miami Daily News, saw this as more of the

same poorly designed propaganda that brought Republican defeats in the previous



14 Minutes of Meeting of the Republican National Executive Committee, 12 June 1946, Republican
Party Papers, Roll 8.