Ike was a disastrous President. He did nothing to drastically shrink the massive Socialist state of FDR/Truman or to purge the equally massive Communist infiltration of the government and culture. He then handed the country over to JFK/LBJ on a silver platter that has sent us downhill ever since (with a brief break during Reagan).
This country needed Patton and/or MacArthur to serve in the White House and to do what needed to be done.
Remember that the "me too" wing of the GOP had become dominant in the 1940s, with Presidential nominees Thomas Dewey and Wendell Willkie part of that faction, the predecessor to today's RINOs. Robert Taft led the conservative wing of the GOP; he would have reversed the New Deal and thoroughly purged the Communists and their sympathizers from the Federal government. Unlike Reagan or Trump, Taft was not a charismatic personality, while Eisenhower was well liked as the man who led the Allies to victory. At the time, the California GOP was conservative, but Earl Warren and Richard Nixon cut a deal with Eisenhower to have the Golden State delegates to the Republican Convention support the former general. The price was that Warren became Chief Justice and Nixon became Vice President.