organizations and the Democrats had wrongly portrayed both it and the Republican

Party as enemies of the working class. The poll indicated that the American people

realized the need for Taft-Hartley and the disapproval of the law stemmed from

partisanship, not from any adverse effect on unions or employers.8 Taft believed that

the poll results were accurate and doubted that the labor law had defeated Dewey. J.

Mack Swigert, a partner in Taft's law firm in Cincinnati, concluded that "It is

doubtless true that some Congressmen were beaten by the Taft-Hartley issue. From

the point of view of the country at large, however, it seems clear that the election

returns contained no mandate whatsoever against this law. The Union propaganda that

labor won the election is a great hoax."9 Taft refused to be the scapegoat for the

Republican defeat and stood on the record of the Taft-Hartley Act and the 80th

Congress.

 The varied election analyses fueled factional tensions and the resulting charges

and counter-charges had unintended side effects. Because the defeat was attributed

more to policy positions than campaign strategy, the Taft and Dewey groups attacked

each other for their supposed political philosophies and affixed ideological labels,

although imprecise and never truly consistent, to each other. Granted, some members

of the party openly embraced the title of "conservative" or "liberal," but the intensity

of the partisan infighting generated a number of ad hominem attacks between the

Republican groups that gained traction in the heated post-election atmosphere. While

the factions shared a fundamental set of political principles, these debates amplified

relatively minor policy and rhetorical differences a hundred-fold in the press and in

private correspondence. The Taft camp, almost to a person, claimed that Dewey


8 Opinion Poll. Ross Federal Research Company, February 1948. Copy in Folder (Campaign
Miscellany -- Printed Matter -- Background Material -- 1948 (1)), Box 234, Taft Papers.
9 J. Mack Swigert, Letter to William McGrath, 31 January 1949. Copy in Folder (1948 Campaign
Miscellany -- Convention Arrangements -- Election Results -- 1949 (1)), Box 227, Taft Papers.