My guess is that Glenn Beck and Dinesh D’Souza are the culprits who have everyone believing that the income tax, the Federal Reserve, and progressive politics began with Woodrow Wilson. This is not remotely accurate.
The current income tax as previously described began with the Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft GOP administrations.. and in fact it didn’t require Wilson to do anything, it became Constitutional when Delaware ratified the 16th Amendment in 1913.
The Federal Reserve also began with legislation during Teddy Roosevelt’s administration... in response to the Panic of 1907 the National Monetary Commission was created to study how to modernize American banking... this was the Aldrich-Vreeland Act named for its two GOP sponsors...a modified version of the Monetary Commission’s study was signed into law by Wilson but it originated with TR and Taft.
Our first progressive era President was surely Republican Teddy Roosevelt, he even went on run for President on Progressive Party ticket in 1912 which split the GOP vote and gave the election to Woodrow Wilson.
There were many Republican progressives besides Teddy Roosevelt... Hiram Johnson, Robert La Follette among them.. plenty of them ended up in the administration of Teddy’s Democratic cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt. People don’t know this history and clowns like Beck and Dinesh further mislead them.
Was TR’s party the first use of the term, “progressive” or did he co-opt it from somewhere?