Eisenhower tried to quiet the Taft Republicans by supporting the addition of the words “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance and saying little about McCarthy, but it didn’t work. Taft’s men hated Eisenhower for taking the 1952 Republican nomination from their beloved senator, and Taft’s death the following year hardened their enmity. When the new president embraced the premises of the New Deal with a program he called the Middle Way, they were apoplectic. It had been bad enough when Democrats used the government to promote the general welfare, but when a Republican president signed on, too,
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