The New Era of Bliss

With the assumption of office in the Republican Party Mr. Ray Bliss of Ohio is said to expect to accomplish any number of miracles, or rather the single miracle of bringing the Republican Party back to power. I suspect that Mr. Bliss is too practiced a politician to believe that any such thing can be done as a result of his own efforts. Putting the Republicans back in power will require a miracle of strictly divine specifications. Ray Bliss’ job is to hold the Republican Party together as best he can, against the day when one of two improbable things happen: a) the Democratic leadership will so overplay its hand as to become discredited just in time for a national election; or b) 15 per cent of the American voting public, having had enough, will change its affiliation from Democratic to Republican.

It would, incredibly, take nothing less than that numerical shift to bring the GOP back in. In 1940, 38 per cent of the voters were registered as Republicans. Last year the number declined to 25 per cent. Meanwhile, the Democratic share rose from 42 to 52 per cent. The figures indicate a secular descent in Republican strength over a period of a generation: and, interestingly enough, show that Goldwater, considering the low Republican base from which he began, did rather better than Johnson in increasing the percentage of his vote over the registration figure. (He took the GOP from 25 per cent to 38 per cent; Johnson took the Democrats from 52 per cent to 62 per cent.) I doubt whether Ray Bliss would be prepared to guarantee that at the present point Dwight Eisenhower, even at his prime, could beat Adlai Stevenson in a national election: such has been the attrition.

With the assumption of office in the Republican Party Mr. Ray Bliss of Ohio is said to expect to accomplish any number of miracles, or rather the single miracle of bringing the Republican Party back to power. I suspect that Mr. Bliss is too practiced a politician to believe that any such thing can be done as a result of his own efforts. Putting the Republicans back in power will require a miracle of strictly divine specifications. Ray Bliss’ job is to hold the Republican Party together as best he can, against the day when one of two improbable things happen: a) the Democratic leadership will so overplay its hand as to become discredited just in time for a national election; or b) 15 per cent of the American voting public, having had enough, will change its affiliation from Democratic to Republican.

It would, incredibly, take nothing less than that numerical shift to bring the GOP back in. In 1940, 38 per cent of the voters were registered as Republicans. Last year the number declined to 25 per cent. Meanwhile, the Democratic share rose from 42 to 52 per cent. The figures indicate a secular descent in Republican strength over a period of a generation: and, interestingly enough, show that Goldwater, considering the low Republican base from which he began, did rather better than Johnson in increasing the percentage of his vote over the registration figure. (He took the GOP from 25 per cent to 38 per cent; Johnson took the Democrats from 52 per cent to 62 per cent.) I doubt whether Ray Bliss would be prepared to guarantee that at the present point Dwight Eisenhower, even at his prime, could beat Adlai Stevenson in a national election: such has been the attrition.