ABSTRACT
Walter Kohler's political career was originally launched by an act of suddenness. In 1951, Kohler declined to launch a campaign against McCarthy in the 1952 race based on the strong appeals of the party leadership for what he perceived to be the good of the party. In 1957, he was convinced that the good of the party and the country required it. It wasn't that it had taken him until 1957 to determine McCarthy's defeat would be a good. It had simply taken until 1957 for him to have another opportunity to run against him. The distinctive laws of Wisconsin's highly populist political system abetted the swiftness of McCarthy's return to obscurity. On the surface McCarthy's passing and the prospect of a special election was a boon to the Republicans, sparing them a fratricidal clash of the McCarthy–Kohler titans –the survivor of which would have been a GOP candidate whose opponent's supporters were likely to emerge embittered from the struggle.
