In 1908, after he had served two terms as president, Theodore Roosevelt decided it was time for a new president, so as to prevent the public from believing he was a dictator. However, he wasn't going to leave the presidency and then allow just anyone to march into the White House.
Roosevelt immediately saw William Howard Taft as a good option. Taft had worked with Roosevelt before and he saw Taft as responsible and having good values. Roosevelt pushed for Taft as the Republican candidate and helped to get him elected.
To everyone's surprise, Taft was not the progressive that Roosevelt had believed him to be. Almost immediately after entering office, he dropped the progressive act, favoring conservatism. Taft undid some of Roosevelt's policies and didn't give as much care and importance to the environment and the parks as Roosevelt did.
Roosevelt decided he could not support Taft having a second term, worried that Taft would cause too much damage to the progressive work he had done if he got to serve eight years. Under Taft, the conservatism of the Republican party had only intensified, and progressive Republicans were fed up with it.
All of this led to the formation of the National Republican Progressive League, which became the Progressive Party, who chose Theodore Roosevelt as their progressive candidate to run against Taft in the 1912 elections. Roosevelt ran a strong campaign, surpassing Taft in votes, but ultimately losing to Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson due to a fractured Republican party.
Woodrow Wilson was nearly as progressive as Roosevelt, so many of the progressive Republicans found themselves realigning with the Democratic Party, which solidified the Republican Party as more conservative. As progressive Republicans left the Progressive Party for the Democratic Party, the Progressive Party fell into irrelevancy and eventually collapsed.
In years since, more parties have emerged with the label "The Progressive Party", so to differentiate Roosevelt's Progressive Party, historians have renamed it The Bull Moose Party, after Roosevelt's principles of strength and vigor.
While the Bull Moose Party ultimately did not last very long or make a serious impact, it was an important part of one of America's most intense elections, the election of 1912.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bull-Moose-Party
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1755.html
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ReplyDeleteThis was a really interesting post! I never realized just how far Theodore Roosevelt went to gain a re-election. From what I had known, it had only seemed like there was a division in the Republican party, not the creation of an entirely new party. It's fascinating to see how another party played an impact in American history and what it meant for the nation as a whole. One fact that I found very interesting was that the nickname of "Bull Moose Party" was one given by the media. Roosevelt himself took on the name as he declared after beings shot during a speech, "You see, it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose." While the media may not always be right, in this case it helped give a name to a political party that didn't last for a very long time but still played a important part in American History.
ReplyDeleteSOURCE : https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/teddy-roosevelt-nominated-as-bull-moose-candidate