Alice's wit could have a political effect on friend and foe alike. When columnist and cousin Joseph Wright Alsop V claimed that there was grass-roots support for Republican presidential candidate Wendell Willkie, the Republican hope to defeat FDR in 1940, she said yes, "the grass roots of 10,000 country clubs." During the 1940 presidential campaign, she publicly proclaimed that she'd "rather vote for Hitler than vote for Franklin for a third term." Alice demolished Thomas Dewey, the 1944 opponent of her cousin Franklin, by comparing the pencil-mustached Republican to "the bridegroom on the wedding cake". The image stuck and Governor Dewey lost two consecutive presidential elections.