Taft, Robert A.

Taft, Robert A. (Alphonso) (1889–1953) U.S. senator; born in Cincinnati, Ohio (son of President William Howard Taft). He graduated from Yale and Harvard Law School. During World War I he worked with Herbert Hoover in the U.S. Food Administration and then for postwar European relief efforts. He entered politics in Ohio, serving in the state legislature, and as a prominent conservative Republican he went on to serve in the U.S. Senate (Ohio; 1938–53). An isolationist in foreign affairs and an opponent of "New Deal" and "Fair Deal" domestic programs, he was a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 1940, 1948, and 1952. Known as "Mr. Republican," he coauthored the Taft-Hartley Act, which imposed new restrictions on labor, defended Senator Joseph McCarthy, and continued to oppose the U.S.A.'s internationalist actions.