landslide two years earlier. The aloofness of the Dewey campaign made the

Republicans, not the Democrats, appear as the party in power and enabled Truman to

attack with the vehemence of a caged animal. Dewey's refusal to attack Truman on

concrete issues led to a boring and uneventful campaign that made the Republicans

seem oblivious or indifferent to the economic and social problems of the nation. Such

a strategy, the report claimed, led to frustration in an American public that" love[s] to

engage in the healthy American practice to ruffle a stuffed shirt, throw a snowball at a

top hat, or boo a champion stalling a fight."21 The distance of the candidate from

Congress and the Washington political environment had left him unprepared to

defend the 80th Congress and made the party appear hopelessly divided on important

policy areas like labor relations and civil rights.

 The RSPC report saw some positive signs in the 1948 results, however, and

called for a bold new strategy for the GOP that combined publicity and organization

with a hefty dose of political theory. It called for the Republicans to define the term

"liberalism" and to stake their claim as the party most beholden to the classical liberal

tradition of limited government and free-enterprise, rather than let the Democrats

control the discourse and continue to equate liberalism with support for the working

class and minorities. The RSPC urged the Republicans to re-evaluate their system of

political campaigning and move beyond the standard interpretation of politics.

"Republicans need to make a fresh study of their position," the report stated. "In

doing this job it is important to bear in mind that the major political controversies

today do not center about objectives (such as gold vs. silver or high vs. low tariff) but

mainly about methods of attaining objectives. Failure to observe this fact in the past


21 "1948 Election Result," Report of the Senate Majority Policy Committee, undated. Copy in Folder
(1948 Campaign Miscellany Convention Arrangements Election Results 1947-48), Box 277, Taft
Papers.