Key Predicts Two-Party System in South; States GOP Lacks New Domestic Policy

Democratic and Republican maneuvers in the South may mark the beginning of a "reconstruction" of the two-party system below the Mason-Dixon line, according to V. O. Key, Jr., professor of Government.

Republicans, he said, have been making headway in gaining the support of the emerging business and industrial classes. "Many of these persons were Dixiecrats in 1948. Now they are taking the next step into the Republican party."

"On the other hand," Key added, "the Democrats, in their nomination of Sparkman, recognized the less conservative wing of the southern Democrats. It seems evident that the national Democratic party if holding and renewing the loyalties of those classes of southerners who might reasonably be expected to be Democratic in the light of the broad differences in policy emphasis between the two parties."

"The major strategy of the campaign," Key went on, "has been fixed by the fact that the Democratic party commands the loyalty of a majority of the electorate. The task of the Democrats has been to hold this majority together; that of the Republicans to whittle away enough Democrats to gain a majority for themselves."

The Democratic majority, said Key, has been constructed on "popular acceptance of the domestic policies of the New and Fair Deals." He pointed out that "while right-wing Republicans dissent with no little bitterness from these policies, they are, as a matter of practical politics, limited in the sort of attack they can make on them."

Since they lack a domestic program which appeals to the "great masses of citizens," Key said that the test of the Republican's strategy is whether they can "chisel down the Democratic following by flank attacks on the subsidiary issues--of communism, corruption, and foreign policy."

He emphasized that the Democrats are "hard pressed to offset the probable electoral effect" of these attacks. "The hammering of the communist issues is calcu- lated to weaken the loyalties of certain religious and nationalistic groups which are traditionally Democratic."

Wife-Beating Query

Key pointed out that the Democrats are faced with a "when-did-you-stop-bearing-your-wife" sort of question and are "hard put to cope with it as a matter of campaign tactics." They do not stand on a pro-corruption platform, yet to the extent that they are forced to debate on these grounds they cannot bring the Republicans to task on the substantive issues of policy, either domestic or foreign."

He believes that the Democrats have more difficulty in keeping their own forces in line than the Republicans, because a larger proportion of the Democrats have relatively low income and educational levels. This, he said, explains "the rather robust language" used by Truman and others to show that the Republican party is controlled by the same old crowd. "Herbert Hoover, the depression, Wall Street and various other notions, not necessarily of immediate relevence, have use in renewing the embers of Democratic loyalty," he said.

High-Level Campaign

Replying to comments that the campaign is not being carried on as high level as predicted. Key said, "the practical necessities of communication between political leader and voter result in considerable use of the vernacular, will somewhat to the distress of those who predicted a high-level campaign. Yet a campaign that gets to the people the issues at stake may quite well be a high level campaign, although the bluntness of the language of political debate may jar the sensibilities of the sensitive."

Slush Fund

Speaking of the Nixon "slush fund" affair, Key said. "My guess would be that it resulted in some net gain for the Republican ticket, not so much because of resounding Republican approval of Nixon's financial arrangements as the opportunity the incident gave him to make himself heard on other matters."

He added that the Nixon case marks the first time that "the national committee of a party has in effect, formally approved the subsidization of a United States Senator by groups with a prospective, if not an immediate interest in legislation. Such financial arrangements have undoubtedly existed before, but they have been regarded as matters not to be spoken of much less defended in public.