Guarded in public comments, Eisenhower could be revealing in private. On one occasion, a 1954 letter to his brother Edgar (Document #1147; November 8, 1954 To Edgar Newton Eisenhower), Eisenhower revealed that he held conservative views, but that they were tempered by a deep sense of political caution and pragmatism.
As Eisenhower explained, he opposed "too great a degree of centralization of governmental functions" and that "in some instances the fight is a rather desperate one." Yet "the Federal government cannot avoid or escape responsibilities which the mass of the people firmly believe should be undertaken by it. The political processes of our country are such that if a rule of reason is not applied in this effort, we will lose everything--even to a possible and drastic change in the Constitution. This is what I mean by my constant insistence upon "moderation" in government. Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history."
I am sure that Taft would not have disagreed with that assessment. Even today, few conservative political leaders would dare to try to repeal the basic federal safety net that the public is so deeply attached to.
There was virtually no time Taft & Ike had to work together. Taft transferred duties as Majority Leader when he prepared to go to the hospital, this less than 5 months after Ike was sworn in (June 1953) and died the following month. Bill Knowland stepped into the job of Taft, but LBJ was running the show before long, so there was no “Conservative” agenda to speak of.
And, again, whatever Ike revealed in private demonstrates nothing if it doesn’t translate to a similar agenda, the abortion example I gave you. Ike had a premier opportunity to move the nation back to the right, to drastically cut tax rates for job creators (AKA the rich), to weed out the Communist and Communist sympathizers within the government and our public institutions (for which McCarthy was demonstrably proven to be right about, as the Soviet Venona Documents confirmed). Instead, the “pragmatism” kept in place everything a quarter-century of Socialist expansionism had wrought since Hoover’s tinkerings (himself a left-winger Progressive Wilsonian Democrat who switched to the GOP before the 1920 elections solely out of opportunism as he knew the Dems would be obliterated that year and he didn’t want to be on the losing side).
As with Ike, Nixon/Ford, Bush Sr. & Jr., they pissed away Conservative opportunities willfully so, clearing the way for far worse Socialist (or worse) policies from their successors.
With Ike’s failure to address these Socialist (so-called) “safety net” policies and their viability for the long run, he did the nation a grave disservice and paved the way for expansionism upon such policies that have driven us to such obscene levels of spending and debt. Real leadership at the time would’ve seen the enactment of a balanced budget amendment, for starters, to assure future spending sprees would be made a prohibitive venture.
All in all, the Democrats and the left ultimately lost little and gained everything under Ike’s “leadership” (ditto Nixon and the execrable Bush Dynasty).