Posted on 11/11/2022 12:31:19 PM PST by FarCenter
One hundred years ago this week [written in 2012], a dramatic Republican National Convention prepared the ground for the transformation of American democracy. On June 17, 1912, the celebrated ex-President Theodore Roosevelt delivered a dramatic speech that that encouraged his political followers to walk out of the Convention, maintaining that the Republican National Committee and President William Howard Taft defied the will of the people and stole the nomination of the Grand Old Party. Since April, Roosevelt had warned of a walkout should the Old Guard of the party defy the clear intention of the Republican primaries that year – the first time popular primaries played an important role in a presidential election. Having been denied the Republican nomination, in spite of trouncing President Taft in these contests, TR bolted the Republican Convention and summoned a new party to “stand at Armageddon" and “battle for the Lord.” Progressive followers of TR left the convention on June 22 and reconvened in Chicago's Orchestra Hall to endorse the formation of a national progressive party.
The 1912 presidential election was a rare campaign in which voters were challenged to think seriously about their rights and the Constitution. Four impressive candidates engaged in a remarkable debate about the future of American democracy. In particular, each candidate tried to grapple with the emergence of corporations embodying a concentration of economic power that posed fundamental challenges to the foundations of the decentralized republic of the 19th century. Although Eugene Debs, the Socialist candidate, and Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic candidate who was elected president, contributed significantly to this surrogate constitutional convention, in a real sense, the most important exchange was between TR and Taft.
That the 1912 election registered, and inspired, fundamental changes in American politics owes, above all, to Roosevelt’s Progressive party campaign. The party was joined by an array of crusading reformers who viewed Roosevelt's campaign as their best hope to advance a program of national transformation. TR’s campaign pioneered a new form of “modern” politics – one that would eventually displace the traditional localized democracy, which had dominated representative government in the United States since the beginning of the nineteenth century. His crusade made universal use of the direct primary a cause célèbre; assaulted traditional partisan loyalties; and championed candidate-centered campaigns. Indeed, it advocated a direct relationship between government and public opinion, facilitated by the recall, initiative and referendum, including popular referenda on court decisions, and a more majoritarian constitutional amendment process. It also took advantage of the centrality of the newly emergent mass media and convened an energetic, but uneasy coalition of self-styled public advocacy groups. All of these features of the Progressive party campaign make the election of 1912 look more like that of 2012 than that of 1908.
The only lesson from the 1912 is that, splitting the party is a good way to end up with a leftist would-be dictator as President.
Far more consequential than that. It's how we got dislodged from the Constitution. The article is surprisingly clear about that:
"TR’s campaign pioneered a new form of “modern” politics – one that would eventually displace the traditional localized democracy, which had dominated representative government in the United States since the beginning of the nineteenth century"
It was TR who murdered the Founding Fathers' Constitutional vision like an assassin in the night. The spirit of 1789 was concluded between the years of 1900 and 1912. The progressives just kept nationalizing and nationalizing - every issue has to be nationalized. Screw the states - that's what the progressives believe. They hate the states. They hate the states more than anybody knows, more than I could ever accurately describe.
Every problem we face today, all roads lead back to two sabotaging men: Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. It all boils down to this. Progressivism is America's Cancer.
TR’s party was Progressive.
He was Ross Perot before Ross Perot.
—yep—from his first day in office, every action of TR was designed to increase the power and size of government—
Ah, yes Armageddon, singing Battle Hymn of the Republic, and general TR hysterics and hyperventilation. Down w/ the courts, up with the people! Initiative! Referendum! Recall! etc. etc.
Later that Fall, when things finally calmed down, TR wrote to his acolyte, Gifford Pinchot, that perhaps “we keyed our note very high, probably too high.” Ya think, Teddy?
Actually, by September of 1912, TR’s act was wearing thin, and his star was fading. However, the attempted assassination that October, in which he took a bullet in his chest (hindered by his glasses case and a 50-page rant he had prepared) and finished his speech despite it, saved his campaign. Roosevelt and Taft combined won more votes than Wilson. It’s possible that some portion of TR votes would have gone for Wilson and not Taft, but TR’s 3rd party bolt ensured Wilson’s election.
TR was the opening act that led to the dark tyranny of current Marxist-communist America that we & our descendants will be suffering through for the next 997.6 years...
All this was accomplished by following the strategies that the Fabians formulated in the late 1880s & 1890s as the only possible way to destroy the Republic and its capitalist system...
The Republic’s enemies list has included:
TR
Wilson
FDR
Johnson
Nixon
Carter
Clinton
Bush
Obama
Biden
They all did their part, yet very few Americans listened to the many prophetic warnings all along the way...
Ronald Reagan was precise: A thousand years of the darkest tyranny...
The ballot box is finished!
Actually, a Senate re- call mechanism would be great.
Not Truman or JFK. ( Who by today’s standard is Conservative.)
All direct democracy has accomplished is to distance the people from their state legislatures and vice-versa. Instead of giving the people more power, it has isolated state legislatures from accountability — and empowered them and their interest groups to use the direct democracy mechanisms to do their will and not that of the people.
And you can add the 17th amendment to this unintended negative consequence of progressivism and direct democracy.
Reading about TR's post-presidential years suggests some parallel's to today's situation. I hope we aren't headed for another party split.
Good read. Thanks for posting.
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