ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines Robert A. Taft's work for responsible party in the United States. In modern society, the alternatives to government through responsible parties are unpleasant: tyranny, oligarchy, "plebiscitary democracy", or anarchy. In domestic or in foreign policy, Senator Taft labored under a heavy handicap when he tried to define Republican principles. For his party, before its defeats in 1930 and 1932, had been little more than the party of prosperity: with prosperity vanished, the Republicans were all at sea. The Republican party's dilemma, says Samuel Lubell, "has been the necessity of choosing between embracing or repudiating the conservative coalition in Congress." The final defeat of Taft for his party's presidential nomination appears, in historical perspective, to have been a rout of the essential Republican party—though not necessarily a permanent fall. Taft's admirers—who were numerous and ardent, despite Taft's disdain for the techniques of mass public relations—sank into despair.
