Republicans were utterly terrified of being painted as “just like Hoover.” Instead of attacking FDR en masse for not only not solving the Depression, but making it even worse, they were falling all over themselves to be FDR-lite (or even FDR-heavy).
FDR would portray himself as a “moderate” against the ultraleft radicals (Huey Long) who was trying to “save capitalism” from their more crazy schemes. Nice little trick. Then, of course, he was just as radical as they were and tried the full-scale Communist-style purge of the remaining non-leftist Dems for the 1938 elections and the attempt to hijack the Supreme Court. A real “moderate.”
Landon, sadly, has been the model for the decades since. They might offer benign opposition to the Dems, but have no intention of truly rolling back their radical leftist/big gubmint policies. Eisenhower was about the same as Landon.
The 1936 elections were about the nadir of 20th century politics. Out of 6 general election candidates, 3 were Communist tyrants (FDR, Norman Thomas, Earl Browder) and 2 were Socialists (Landon and Rep. William Lemke, a ND Socialist Republican and ally of Huey Long(!)), leaving just the Prohibitionist candidate, D. Leigh Colvin, who was the one-issue candidate. He’d have probably been the only protest candidate to vote for.
Because the GOP had been annihilated in the period, they hardly had much of a farm team of candidates. Landon looked good on paper because he had defeated a Dem incumbent in 1932 and won by a decent reelection margin in 1934. Compared to his opponent at the 1936 convention, the rabid Socialist-Isolationist Sen. William Borah (infamous for cuckolding the poor GOP Speaker Longworth by banging his wife and Teddy’s daughter, Alice Roosevelt Longworth), Landon looked like a right-winger. The other potential candidate ? Earl Warren, then the D.A. of Alameda County. What a horror.
As for Landon’s grandson, William A. Kassebaum, he served a single term in the KS House by narrowly defeating Shari Weber, the sitting Majority Leader, in 2002 (I think she may have been a Conservative). Because he beat her by a paltry 125 votes, she didn’t give up and continued on into the general election as a write-in candidate. He got 53%, she got 31% as a write-in, and the Dem was an afterthought with 16%.
He didn’t work out too well and Weber challenged him in a primary rematch in 2004 and beat him by 7% to reclaim her seat. He apparently didn’t run for office again and he endorsed the Demonrat Paul Davis for Governor against freshman Sam Brownback.
Democrats and leftists today don’t hate Ike, that tells you all you need to know, he wasn’t all bad (interstates) and I hate to rate him poorly but...