Heck, just about every Republican and conservative born today could call himself a Bull Mooser, and that would make him a "progressive".
I think about the only people in the GOP fold who could avoid that tag would be the paleocons who go around talking about Schumpeter and the Austrian School, and telling us we have to have a severe enough depression and panic to "do some good" by putting half the workforce on the street and destroying tens of thousands of firms so the survivors can make more money. That's the Old Guard talking, the "economic royalists" or "social Darwinists" if you will. Those guys aren't the Progressives, Bull Moosers, and Mugwumps of the modern GOP, they're the Stalwarts, the "malefactors of great wealth" of that earlier age, whose reply to depression and recession was "let 'em eat cake!"
They'd rather die fighting on their factory steps and shouting "Death to syndicalists!" than negotiate a raise. Now that is hardcore!
yup, the Progressive title thrown around on the thread is in splatter form.
I call liberals just that and most are liberal fascist.
This current Progressive term is dished out by the huckester Glen Beck who states Democrats and Republicans are both the same.
He he telling us Obama & Pelosi are the same as Palin and
Marine Capt. & Congressman Duncan D. Hunter.
Conservatives are not Bull Moosers. Bull Moosers were indeed the Progressive Party and Teddy’s platform was socialist:
The Bull Moose party platform - “New Nationalism” - included direct election of U.S. Senators, the creation of an initiative, referendum, and recall process, woman suffrage, a national tariff reduction, child labor laws, old-age pensions.
It called for easier amendment of the U.S. Constitution, workers’ compensation, farm relief, revision of banking to assure an elastic currency, required health insurance in industry, new inheritance tax, income tax, and limitation of naval armaments.