Rear Platform Remarks in Indiana

[1.] GARRETT, INDIANA (9:53 a.m.)

Thank you very much. I am certainly glad to be here in Garrett this morning and to talk to you about this great campaign. I appreciate the introduction by the next Congressman from this district, Mr. Edward H. Kruse, Jr. I know you are going to send him to Congress because you need that sort of representation there these days.

I was most highly entertained and well treated while I was in Indiana before by your great Democratic candidate for Governor, former Governor Schricker, and I am looking to see Indiana in the right column all the way down the line this time.

It has been a good campaign for me. It has been a hard campaign. I have traveled from one end of the country to the other, telling millions of people about peace, prices, and places to live, and the other issues which face the Nation today. My opponent has talked a great deal too, but he said almost nothing about where he stands on the major issues facing the American people today. He just keeps on giving the people high-level platitudes. You know, that's what "G.O.P." means in this day and age--it means "Grand Old Platitudes."

The Republican candidate has gone from one doubtful State to another trying to bail out the campaigns of hopeless reactionaries who ran the Republican 80th Congress. He is trying to help those birds that ran that good-for-nothing 80th Congress. He is trying to get them all reelected. One of these salvage operations is being carried on right next door here in Illinois. The Republican candidate is hoping to save that hard-shelled isolationist reactionary, Curly Brooks, who has been the Senator from Illinois for quite some time. I think that should give you a pretty good idea of just how meaningless all these fine words are.

You know, one of the high-sounding lectures we have been hearing from the Republican candidate over and over again concerns communism. The Republicans are trying to pretend that my administration has been friendly to communism. That bit of campaign propaganda reminds me a lot of the stories we heard during the war and are now hearing from the Communists in Russia. They believe that if you tell a big enough lie, somebody is bound to believe it. If anybody in this country is friendly to the Communists, it is the Republicans who are trying so hard to be elected. It's not the Truman administration--I can tell you that.

The Communists are doing everything in their power to beat me. They have taken over the Third Party and are using it in a vain attempt to split the Democratic Party. The Republicans have joined up with this Communist-inspired Third Party to beat the Democrats. They finance the situation right here. The Republicans financed the Third Party to get on the ballot right here in Indiana in a number of counties. We have got straight-out evidence on that, and I can prove it. Right here in Indiana the Republican State Committee did its best to get that Third Party on the ballot. Over in Illinois the Republicans are still trying to get the Third Party on the ballot. They even went all the way to the Supreme Court to get them on there. "By their friends ye shall know them."

Don't fall for their cheap promises. Vote for the party that has a program for peace and for prosperity and for places to live. Vote for the future of this Nation. And the way to do that is to vote for your friends. You know, you are the Government, when you analyze it, when you exercise the privilege of the vote on election day. You control the government absolutely, and you get the kind of government you want when you vote. Back in 1946 about two-thirds of you stayed at home and didn't vote, and you got the 80th Congress--and look what you got!

Now, don't do that this time. Go to the polls on election day and vote the Democratic ticket straight and you will be voting for yourselves and your own interests.