COOLIDGE POPULAR

Greymouth Evening Star, 3 November 1923, Page 6

COOLIDGE POPULAR

REPUBLICANS SUPPORT Iliil,

It has been decided that Mr. Calvin Coolidge (President of the United States) would lend no particular strength to a ticket in 1924 headed by the late Warren G. Harding. All this is changed now. Mr. Coolidge can have the next regular Republican nomination for the asking.

As a matter of fact, it will be thrust upon him. The leaders will not take “no” for an answer. They have iaith in President Coolidge. They believe that in the short time that intervenes before the primaries and the convention itself everything is right, and he will establish himself as the party choice.

The conclusion that Mr. Harding’s death had left the party in chaos was erroneous. The progressive and radical wings of the party were preparing to descend upon Mr. Harding in the presidential year. It will be difficult for them to descend upon President Coolidge, for he has done nothing upon which they can descend.

Calvin Coolidge has resumed a leadership which must be respected. It must not be assumed from this that Progressives’ hopes are dead. The Progressives are still in a mood to fight, to fight somebody, somewhere. Perhaps they can find rifts in the Coolidge armour, but the time is short and he has all the advantage. The hope of Hiram Johnson, of La Follette, of Pinchot, and the others who may have been considered in line for the Presidential nomination, were built upon an opportunity of attack. They are suddenly left with no one to attack..

Republican leaders no longer deny that the country was restless at the time of President Harding’s death. It was a restlessness suggestive of a change. The country was in «. mood for experimentation. New, through an act of Providciice, the change has come. There is a new deal at the White House, a new deal without any upset to the party in power, without any schism within the ranks. The leaders believe that much of the restlessness will now be relieved ; that there will be a disposition, instead, to give the new man his chance. They believe there will be at least a temporary sobering of the more radical thought, that any opposition to Mr Coolidge in the next Republican convention must be of such a scattering nature as to be all but negligible. The Democrats view the situation from an entirely different angle. 'lhey, too, agree that the Harding iVlministration is a thing of the past; but they say that Republican responsibility for the situation which may confront the country next year, cannot be shifted from the party to the individual. The Democrats will attack the party and its capacity to govern. 'I he Democratic attack will swing away from the White House to the Capitol. It was never the Democratic disposition to make a fight upon Mr. Harding himself. They have preferred all along to take the position that Mr. Harding was a good man, a man trying to do the right thing, but that his party leaders in Congress would not support him in his personal policies, and would not fall in with his beneficent leadership. As the Democrats see it, President Coolidge will not be able to do much with a recalcitrant Congress that Harding could accomplish nothing with.