Word: bensonized
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...traditional Republican heartland between the Mississippi and the Rockies, Republicans lost eight House seats, two Senate places, at least two governorships (Nebraska is still in doubt). High on the list of causes: the political unpopularity of Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson. Taking over in 1953, Benson inherited a farm-policy mess that saw prices slumping badly while the Government poured billions into the farm economy. Trying to reverse the policy of farm government-by-handout, Benson was blamed when the agricultural recession continued. By this year, when the farm economy dramatically improved (TIME, May 12), it was too late...
Almost to a man, Democratic winners in the Midwest campaigned harder against Benson personally than against his policies. "I got up to 5-to-1 majorities in normally Republican rural areas," said Iowa's lone Incumbent Democratic Representative Merwin Coad, who increased his 1956 plurality of 198 to 16,000 last week. Yet, while attacking Benson, Coad, like a remarkable number of other Midwestern Democratic winners, is far from committed to an all-out reversal of Benson's policies. "I see a moderate reversal of the direction Benson was going in," said Coad. "By moderate reversal, I mean...
With a farm-policy review by the lopsidedly Democratic Congress a certainty, the Eisenhower Administration has a real problem. Should Ezra Benson stay on? Politically, it is probably too late for Benson to help Republicans by leaving. In a policy sense, Benson might hurt the policies for which he stands more by staying than leaving. But at the same time, for the Administration to dump Benson would be to dishonor a man who has fought hard and honestly for a policy aimed at ending the nation's scandalous, multibillion-dollar farm giveaway...
...consistent policy for Latin America," "bold, new, imaginative" foreign policies. He hinted at new attacks upon Administration hard-money policy ("We need to face up to the high interest rates which are slowing the needed growth of our economy"). Also on his target list in some form: Ezra Benson's farm policy, "which now costs 53? in federal subsidies for every dollar the farmer nets...
...learn Gene McCarthy. ¶ Refined a technique of farmers' socials, got local D.F.L. farm contacts to invite neighbors for coffee and ice cream, drew 100-or-so hard-to-reach farmers at a time to shake friendly Humphrey-Freeman- McCarthy hands and hear out criticisms of Republican Ezra Benson (but rarely of respected Ed Thye) in one sitting. ¶ Put on new-style women's tours in which the wives-Muriel Humphrey, Jane Freeman and Abigail McCarthy, old friends, old political pros-went on two-to-three-day outstate swings, shook more hands, won women's votes...