Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 March 1888 — WHAT IS THE TRIBUNE AFTER NOW? [ARTICLE]

WHAT IS THE TRIBUNE AFTER NOW?

A vote on Republican presidential preferences was taken in Rensselaer, last Saturday, with the following result: Gresham 84, John Shermau 13, Harrison 7, Lincoln 8, Porter 1. Blaine 1. Total 50. This straw would seem to indicate that the wind of popular favor was blowing pretty strongly iu Judge Gresham’s direction, in this vicinity, with a rather strong oross current towards John Sherman.

The prohibition county organizing convention, last Saturday afternoon, was far from immense, iu point of numbers. Joseph Clark, of Rensselaer, husband of a locally pretty well known temperance lecturers, Airs. Fannie Clark, was made chairman of the county committee. Joe is generally supposed to be a political prohibitionist because he can’t well help himself, but be is A good, honest fellow, anyhow, and the party in this county gains mightily in respectability in exchanging for him the malignant, office-seeking sorehead, whom he succeeds. W. W. Reeve was elected county secretary ami Berry Paris, treasurer. A convention to nominate county candidates will be held in J une.

There are perhaps a dozen emioent and true Republicans whose names are frequently mentioned in connection with the presidential nomination. Any one of these would, we doubt not, fill the office with ablility, dignity and fidelity to Republican principles. If we were fully persuaded in our own mind which of these men would make the most available candidate, and be the surest of election, that man would be our choice, above all others. But the question of the most available and probably successful candidate, is one too great and too complicated, and affected by so many diverse elements, that we should prefer to trust to the wisdom of the couveution, foi deciding who that man is. The convention will consist of the wisest and most sagacious politicians and statesmen of the coun "try, familiar with the wishes and feelings of Republicans of every state and section and to them may be safely left the task of selecting a the candidate in whom are united the most chances for a successful candidacy.

Just now the Chicago Tribune is as h antic in the advocacy of Jndge Gresham, for the presidency, as it was in advocating Blame lour years ago; and, at the same time, is as frantic in the abuse of Gen-

oral Harrison as it was in tbe abuse of Mr, Blaine in 1876. , The question naturally rises, what is Joe Medill sckemeingjfornow? He is the Lord’s masterpiece of human selfishness, and every thought !of his heart And every strode of his pen has its motive iu {Some hoped for good for Joe Medill, personally, or for his ■ insane hobby, free trade. What motive or mixture of motives, have operated to sot him to raising such a elaqueing for Gresham and such ia ejarnor against Harrison, only the good Lord and his own tortuous mind can 6ay. It is not credible to suppose that an unselfish desire for. the good of Judge . Gxesin, am is a main factor in the problem for Medill knows not what it is to feel an unselfish desire for any man’s good; the very nature of the man absolutely precludes any such supposition. Moreover, Medill is probably too intelligent a man and too astute a politician pot to. know that the almost universal illfrvor and distrust in which the Tribune is held by true Republicans, everywhere, is so powerful and so iinniavable that its loud and persistent advocacy of any man cannot fail, iu the end, to 6 be a great injury. If there is anything in the world that can check or destroy Judge Gresham’s great and rising popularity among the Republican masses, it is the support of that treacherous and selfish sheet. The Indianapolis Journal

thinks that it has found the secret of the Tribune's sudden sweetness towards Gresham and its corresponding bitterness towards Harrison, as a part of a subtle and far reaching scheme to so embitter and divide the friends of all the present prominent Republican candidates as to make the nomination of any of.them impossible, and thus leave no recourse for the party but to force the nomination upon Blaine. The Journal maybe very near the truth in this conjecture but for our part we believe one of the main motives of the Tribune js a desire to recoup itself, finaucially. Its recent course iu advocating Cleveland’s free trade propositions, and in furnish'd campaign editorials for the democratic press, by the score, had the undoubted effect of forfeiting the support of thousands of Republicans and making a big hole in the income of the concern Mediil sees that Gresham is very popular among the masses of Republicans and expects, not unreasonably, to gain enough frieuds by championing the cause of so popular a man to make good what it lost, by its big bad break for free trade.