ABSTRACT
As 1957 came to a close, the country was saddled with a mild recession, which led to the highest unemployment rate in almost twenty years, but Eisenhower remained highly popular. The overall trend during the Eisenhower years was one of prosperity and peace, the latter marked by a thaw in the Cold War by the late 1950s. Ike continued to blend an affable grandfather image with that of a dignified elder statesman, which made him comforting and congenial, yet serious and resolute. Despite the president's popularity, Republican conservatives turned decidedly against him early in his second term, due mainly to his refusal to roll back the big-spending and regulatory liberal state. Longing to return to the largely laissez-faire policies of earlier eras, Barry Goldwater brazenly promoted the opinion of his conservative brethren in 1957 by charging that the Eisenhower administration had been lured by "the siren song of socialism."1 The prevalence of such views further fractured the Republican ranks as the 1958 elections . approached, thus opening the door to disaster for the Grand 0 ld Party. 2
While the Republican fissure did not prove a factor in electoral contests in every state, it had profound consequences in California. In 1957 a bitter battle between Republican conservatives and moderates erupted over who the party's gubernatorial candidate would be in the election the following year. In what one state Republican official called "the greatest political blunder of the generation,"3 party heavyweights pressured the popular Goodwin Knight not to seek reelection in order to make way for the candidacy of William Knowland. Among those putting the squeeze on Knight were Los Angeles Times columnist Kyle Palmer, who informed Knight that his campaign funds would disappear if he did not bow out of the race, and Vice President Richard Nixon, who saw an opportunity to undercut the presidential aspirations of both Knight and Know land in favor of his own. Without strong support from the party or from the Times, the embittered Knight had little choice but to decline to run for a second term. Not wishing to drop out of politics, however, Knight declared his candidacy for Knowland's Senate seat with the blessing of the same party figures who had bulldogged him out of the governor's race.4
