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Herbert Croly was himself, a registered republican. A progressive republican.

""Manifesto" or not, you are assigning vastly more importance to Croly's book than it deserves, at least among Republicans."

No. The entire phrase "New Nationalism" was on loan from Croly, and the entire Progressive Party was mainly dissident former Republicans. Hiram Johnson, the veep was also a former republican. Albert J. Beveridge, Gifford Pinchot, Joseph M. Dixon, and many more. You don't even need to stay within the sphere of elected officials. Sculptor Gutzon Borglum was a republican turned hard-core big-government progressive.

If TR would've gotten his way, you and I would be registered Democrats today bashing republicans like Joe Biden and Barack Obama - but it didn't turn out that way as Wilson managed to concentrate progressivism in the Democrats instead. That's just how the history turned out.

I know you don't know these things and someone needs to tell you. I know you'll reject it because you don't like inconvenient facts but you can't say you weren't told at least once.

And yes, because Theodore Roosevelt went out there and told them "you gotta read this book from Croly" so many of them would have listened.

It's not like Roosevelt did this one singular time. Roosevelt went out there and recommended Croly's second book "Progressive Democracy" as well. He was the leader of the Croly revival.

Theodore Roosevelt was the leader of big government in his day. That's simply the fact.

ProgressingAmerica: "Theodore Roosevelt was the leader of big government in his day.
That's simply the fact."

No, that's simply nonsense.

The facts on Federal spending are:

2.5% of GDP, average -- Democrat Grover Cleveland, 1885-1888, peaked at 2.6%
2.7% of GDP, average -- Republican Benajmin Harrison 1889-1892, peaked at 3%
2.9% of GDP, average -- Democrat Grover Cleveland 1893-1896, peaked at 3.2%
3.1% of GDP, average -- Republican William McKinley 1897-1901, peaked at 3.6%
2.3% of GDP, average -- Republican Teddy Roosevelt 1902-1908, peaked at 2.5%
2.5% of GDP, average -- Republican Howard Taft 1909 -1912, peaked at 2.6%
2.9% of GDP, average -- Democrat Woodrow Wilson 1913-1916 (pre-WWI), peaked at 3.9%

The fact is that, far from being a Big Government, Big Spending Progressive, Teddy Roosevelt had the smallest government of his era, relative to GDP, and of any era since then.

As president, from 1901 to 1908, TR did not govern as a radical Progressive, but, certainly by today's standards, he was a very common-sense conservative.

Yes, in 1912, TR ran for president as a Bull Moose Progressive, under banners raised by radical Progressives like Herbert Croly.
However, already by 1914 TR fell out with Croly and his New Republic magazine because TR was not the Progressive Croly wanted.

So Democrats under Woodrow Wilson and later Franklin Roosevelt took up the Progressive banner that Teddy Roosevelt had dropped in 1914.

That's why, to my mind, TR and TRump are just two peas from the same pod, and I like them both, a lot.

IMHO, YRMV.