The 1952 Presidential campaign season was in full swing, by this June 26th in 1952. General Eisenhower was courting the Youth Vote while at the same time, appealing to his base, the former veterans of World War 2.
Gen. Eisenhower, took a strong party stand in Denver, in an attack on what he called “the men too long in power” -the Democratic party. The Republican presidential aspirant ticked off charges of internal corruption, fear and indecision in foreign policy and runaway big government against the Democrats, whom he accused *complacency, negligence and cynicism,” The general, speaking before some 11,000 in Denver’s Coliseum, spoke particularly to the nation’s youth. He said they are “sick at heart. and cynical because of cor-, ruption in high places, but added that the “idealism and energy of youth” can be trusted to meet the moral issues of the campaign.
Of matters Eisenhower said there had been corruption before, “but never before has it reached such epidemic proportions.” He said 177 persons have been discharged from the Internal Revenue Bureau in a little more than 12 months for improper activities, and that the figure did not include others who quit “because of ” ill health.
Other agencies of the government had been infected with the same ‘poison,’ he said, and their exposure has been due to the efforts of the Republican members of Congress. Referring to world affairs, the general stated. “we are too ready to trust the godless dictatorship,” and our willingness has brought on the war in Korea, the communization •of China, the splitting of Germany, enslavement of Baltic and Balkan countries and struggle in Greece.
The war in Korea, one of these “black monuments,” might have been avoided if we had been “less trusting, if we had been less soft and weak,” Eisenhower said. Still “Russia’s Kremlin masters are not supermen is language they understand military strength.” The general declared that there must be no taint of communism in responsible places in our society. “In this, we must be just but we dare not be soft.” If the country’s youth votes in November, he declared, “then we will be on our way to a good, old fashioned clean-up and clean out.’ Reading from a prepared text. the general stood on a platform crowded with notables both of politics and of Hollywood. Earlier in the day the general met with four Western Republican governors, who agreed that Eisenhower would outstrip Sen. Robert A. Taft as a vote-getter in their states it he should get the nomination.
Gen. Eisenhower will go to Chicago in a week personally to conduct his campaign. Sen. Taft’s campaign manager, David Ingalls, when told in Philadelphia of the proposed move, said, he is shifting “in a last frantic effort to salvage his floundering political ship.”.
Here is the complete Denver address, as it was heard on June 26, 1952 over the CBS Radio Network.
