Jasper County Democrat, Volume 15, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 July 1912 — SCUTTLING THE G. O. P. SHIP [ARTICLE]

SCUTTLING THE G. O. P. SHIP

The Indianapolis Star, the republican state organ, says of the selection of the new national chairman by the Taftites: “The election of Mr. Hilles as national chairman denotes the same sardonic desperation of the scuttle pilots that appeared in their renomination of Jim Sherman and the adoption of a standpat platform. They turn the ship over to Mr. Taft, lock themselves in the admiral's stateroom, throw away the key and await with fortitude the end. “They were willing, of course, to put in Barnes. Possibly they would have preferred Aldrich or Cannon or Lorimer or Smoot; but Barnes would done very well. Any who could not discern the skull and crossbones at the masthead would know by the pirate at the helm that the ship was doomed. “What the president needs, of course, as the national committee knows, is a strong man of brains and character to make up where he lacks in political sense; to guide, admonish and restrain. In this situation the party leaders, with exemplary and demoniac abandon of faithlessness, give him a man who will be nothing but the executor of Mr. Taft’s will and what that means they know perfectly well. The poorest politician in the world, the master of infelicitous speech—they leave him most graciously to his fate. i It would be false and stupid to call them leaders—they are wreckers, and masterfully well their work is being done.”