Two-Party System

Report Outline
Coming Election and the Two-Party System
American Party Changes and Party Rivalry
Future of the American Two-Party System
Special Focus

Coming Election and the Two-Party System

Republican View of Threats to Two-Party System

If The Voters decree in November that control of the federal government shall be transferred from Democratic to Republican hands, the victors in the contest will consider that their success at the polls has removed a grave threat to survival of the American two-party system. Republican leaders have been warning the nation that the 1952 election may determine the fate of that system in the United States. They fear that if the Democrats, already in power for 20 years, are kept in office any longer, they will become so firmly entrenched that it will be impossible to dislodge them, organized political opposition will fade away, and the country will be saddled with one-party rule and its attendant evils. Republicans accordingly contend that a turnover is necessary, if for no other reason, to revivify the two-party system and assure preservation of the benefits and safeguards inherent in political competition and in the occasional shifting of power from one party to another.

Gen. Eisenhower, opening his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, declared at Abilene, Kans., June 4 that “a genuine two-party system” was “essential to America's political health today”. He said that “No other device in our particular form of government can be so effective in preserving the best of the past, in testing the new of the present, in deciding upon the possible of the future”. Reverting to the same theme at Dallas on June 21, Eisenhower added: “I am convinced that if the Republican party should not win, we should see the end or risk the end of the two-party system in the United States—a system that is vital to us. But it is no more than an empty phrase when any party remains too long in power. That point we have now reached”.

Although former President Hoover did not refer specifically to the two-party system in his address at the Republican national convention in Chicago on July 8, he told the delegates that “This election may well be the last chance for the survival of freedom in America”. Earlier the same day Sen. Kem (R., Mo.) asserted before the convention: “The very structure of our government is threatened. The two-party system, which is its foundation, is in danger. Our country must not be delivered over to the ruthless rule of a single party”.