Behind the scenes, Brownell, Dewey, Adams, Henry Cabot Lodge, and the Eisenhower team now put intense pressure on the delegates to get on the Eisenhower bandwagon. They made a simple and powerful argument: Taft could not win a national election, and Eisenhower could. With Ike on the ticket, the Republicans would be back in the White House after 20 years. It worked: early in the afternoon of Friday, July 11, the balloting began, and as state after state voted, it
