by Michael Liss
The optimistic yet somewhat dyspeptic-looking gentleman to your right (quite appropriately to your right) is Ohio Senator Robert A. Taft, a/k/a “Mr. Republican.” Senator Taft was the son of former President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft, a devoted former member of Herbert Hoover’s staff, and an Isolationist who hinted that FDR had encouraged the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor as a way of inducing America to enter the war against Germany. He was also a fervent proponent of small government and big business, opposed expansion of the New Deal, and in 1947, helped override a Truman veto of the thoroughly anti-Labor Taft-Hartley Act.
In short, Mr. Republican was the real deal. In a 2020 essay for the Heritage Foundation, the conservative historian Lee Edwards wrote:
Before there was Ronald Reagan, there was Barry Goldwater, and before there was Barry Goldwater, there was Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio. From 1938 until his unexpected death in 1953, Taft led the conservative Republican resistance to liberal Democrats and their big-government philosophy.
The man could have been President. He certainly tried—running for the GOP nomination in 1940, 1948, and 1952—and, although he fell short, he inspired a generation of limited-government conservatives and left his name “Taft Republicans” to posterity. Taft, and Taft Republicans, are a starting point for what is called “Movement Conservatism.”
Beginning in the early 1950s, their ideas were adopted, co-opted, and expanded upon, perhaps most notably by the young William F. Buckley, Jr. and his National Review. Buckley and other Movement Conservatives went beyond issues like small government and anti-Communism. They explicitly rejected Abraham Lincoln’s vision that America was “dedicated to the principle that all men are created equal” and instead insisted that the Founders’ core value was the protection of private property. The role of government was to get out of the way—except when advancing the interests of the owners of private property. Read more »
In the game of chess, there are dramatic moves such as when a knight puts the king in check while at the same time attacking the queen from the same square. Such a move is called a fork, and it’s always a delicious feeling to watch your opponent purse his lips and shake his head when you manage a good fork. The most dramatic move is obviously checkmate, when you capture the king, hide your delight, and put the pieces back in the box. But getting to either the fork or checkmate involves what’s known in chess as positioning, and for the masters, often involves quiet moves long in advance of the victory.