Republican, First, Last, and Always

Republican, First, Last, and Always: A Biography of B. Carroll Reece examines the political culture that created an intense fervor of anti-communism in America. From 1920 to 1961, B. Carroll Reece served a then unprecedented thirty-five years in the United States House of Representatives. A close friend of Robert Taft, Reece served as Chairman of the Republican National Committee from 1946–1948 and used his position as chairman to push anti-communism to the forefront of the Republican Party’s national agenda and to help Taft try to win the presidency. His background in finance and economics led him to believe that capitalism remained America’s strongest defense against communism. He worked to eradicate any threat to the capitalist system—from trying to block government development of the Muscle Shoals Dam projects in Alabama in the 1920s to forming a congressional committee that attacked foundations created by the Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie families in the 1950s. Reece’s downfall and death represented the demise of Old Guard conservatives within the Republican Party as new leaders and new issues became the center of Republican politics, and his investigation contributed to the animosity towards foundations and large concentrations of wealth that continues today.