Word: dirksen
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...member delegation to vote for a favorite son, Governor James Rhodes, on the first ballot, Scranton's hopes for a breakthrough in the Illinois and Indiana delegations were rebuffed. Early in the week, Scranton stopped by the Capitol Hill office of Illinois' Senator Everett Dirksen, pointedly suggested that Ev would make a "great favorite son." But Dirksen was having no part of such a holding action. He was convinced that Goldwater had a strangle hold on the Illinois delegation, and, he said later, Scranton's suggestion "just sort of flopped onto my desk and stayed there." That...
...mellifluent, loquacious, rumpled, dimpled, damp, and wondrous Wizard of Ooze has done it again; Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen has confounded nearly everyone by announcing that he will place in nomination at the Republican convention the name of a man whom he denounced strongly in the Senate only eleven days...
Judging motives in politics is always a highly popular but exceedingly tricky business. And discovering the motivation underlying the meanderings of the shaggy Senator is unusually difficult. Dirksen, always theatrical, would give reporters no explanation for his decision, "Why I did it because I wanted to," he said with almost puckish glee...
...Dirksen may have "wanted to" for a number of reasons, the most obvious and least likely being a desire for the vice-Presidential nomination. As an old and potent Senator it is highly improbable that he wants to trade his seat as Minority Leader for the second spot on the ticket. (Analogies between him and Lyndon Johnson must be tempered by the fact that Johnson was 52 when he became Vice-President, Dirksen...
More likely, Dirksen wanted to avoid embarrassment in his own delegation which was strongly committed to Goldwater and over which he had little or no control. But this only explains his vote, not the nominating speech...