Steal and rid the party of corruption. This made Brown doubt how Gabrielson would

rule on the question. When he took the microphone, rather than introduce a point of

order, Brown proposed an amendment to the Fair Play amendment excluding the

seven Louisiana delegates from consideration. Rather than placing the onus on

Gabrielson, the amendment proposal opened the matter to a vote of the entire

convention. Here, Brown made a terrible mistake. The Fair Play maneuver had been

planned for weeks. Since it was scheduled to come early in the proceedings, the

Eisenhower leadership had its communications system in place to relay instructions to

delegates on the floor at the start of the convention. As Brown introduced his

amendment to the convention, he was met with a chorus of boos from the Eisenhower

faithful. His proposal sounded very much like a maneuver against honesty and,

despite his plausible argument for removing the seven Louisiana delegates, the

morality of the issue had already became ingrained in the collective psyche of the

1206 delegates.

 Brown's amendment handed the convention to Eisenhower. He had chosen the

wrong battle to fight. When the vote on the Brown amendment was taken, the Taft

group lost 658 to 548. The Taftites then agreed unanimously on the Langlie

amendment to the rules, but by then it was too late. The vote had shown that Taft had

at most 548 votes, a number that included the contested delegates from Louisiana,

Georgia, and Texas. The remaining uncommitted delegations, Michigan, California,

and Minnesota, had given their support overwhelmingly to the Eisenhower position,

with only one of their combined one hundred and forty four delegates voting for the

Brown amendment.78 While this vote did not guarantee support for a particular


8 The lone dissenter was a Michigan delegate. See Patterson, Mr. Republican, 555.