Taft Optimistic About GOP Future, Favors Firmer U.S. Foreign Policy

"The Republican Party is far from dead today," Robert Taft Jr. said last night at the Union. "It only needs to use its head to solve its problems."

The former Congressman-at-Large from Ohio said that the Republican Party must unite around its common "philosophy of responsible individualism." But at the same time Republicans must recognize the need for both government action and imaginative solutions for metropolitan area problems such as pollution, transit, housing, and civil rights, he added.

Taft said that state and local governments should play a larger role in solving these problems. He urged consideration of plans, such as those proposed by former Presidential Economic Adviser Walter Heller, which would return federal revenues to state governments. Taft pointed out that he had sponsored such a plan in the Ohio Legislature in 1957.

Taft, whose defeat in a Senatorial race last year was generally attributed to the Johnson landslide, said that the President's foreign policy has recently become very Republican. Republicans have supported President Johnson's decisions on Vietnam and the Dominican Republic, he said, while many Democrats favor "a softer approach toward Communist infiltration." Taft said he favored firm opposition to Communist aggression. He suggested that voters might be asked to support Republicans in 1968 to give the President more backing in Congress.

Common Policies

Taft said he would like to see the Republican Coordinating Committee, made up of the party's presidential candidates, governors, congressional leaders, and important national committeemen, resolve differences and formulate common policies for all Republican office-seekers. But some candidates, Taft concluded, might have major differences of principle with such policies, and they should not be bound by them.

Taft, who no longer holds public office, has recently taken a trip to Africa and has been speaking to Republican groups across the United States. He said that at the present time, he has made no definite plans for 1966. He adds, however, that "there's a freshman Democrat in my congressional district."