What does the latest book by James Chace, 1912, have to do with the Kerry-Bush election campaign going on today? Mr. Chace contends the 1912 election changed the country. It certainly derailed Theodore Roosevelt's  progressive Republican agenda. It might have changed the country. But, more to the point, as a careful reading of 1912 leads me to believe, the election campaign described in the book affords a fascinating glimpse into the evolution of the Republican party from  Abraham Lincoln's and Theodore Roosevelt's progressive tendencies to what those tendencies have become today -- traditionalist,  fundamentalist, evangelistic. Moreover, the 1912 split in the Republican party is mirrored today in another form. Today's split is not between Progressives and Conservatives as in the Taft-Roosevelt campaign, but between moderate Conservatives and a smaller, but more vocal and aggressive group of Neoconservatives.

During the week of the Republican National Convention, MoveOn PAC began running political ads in which Republicans explain why they plan to vote for Democrat  John Kerry on November 2 rather than George W. Bush. As I read these ads, Kim Mecklenburg's  in particular, I was struck by an underlying attitude -- these people don't intend to remain Democrats. They simply want to see their Republican party come back to what they understand to be its moderate, conservative roots. Kim Mecklenburg, a financial advisor and Marine Corps veteran, explains, "... I thought that Bush would be fiscally conservative. I feel betrayed."

    What, Then, is Going On With The Republican Party?

To James Chace, the Republican party has had a history of warring within itself, starting with the first two decades of the twentieth century. It culminated, he contends, in a right-hand turn during the four-way race in 1912. Theodore Roosevelt was a dedicated Progressive and William Howard Taft, TR's Secretary of State, a fellow Progressive, was his good friend and TR's chosen successor. Taft, however, was both a reluctant candidate and a reluctant president. As a result, Taft became a lackluster leader, willing to allow conservative Republicans in Congress dictate the nation's agenda.

The split in the Republican party between its conservative and progressive elements began here, Chace explains. Roosevelt, furious at his friend for abandoning their shared progressive ideology, attempted to replace Taft on the Republican ticket with himself. But, because of Taft's conservative followers' control of the Republican convention, TR's  defeat as a Republican candidate was a foregone conclusion. As a result TR broke away and formed his own Progressive party, nicknamed The Bullmoose Party, taking his Progressive followers with him.

    The Rise of Wilson and Debs

Meanwhile, Woodrow Wilson, former president of Princeton University and a relative tyro in politics, won his place as governor of New Jersey through the efforts of New Jersey's Democratic machine. As a conservative Democrat, he was seen as the one candidate who could overcome the progressive policies of Roosevelt and was put forward by that same machine as the Democratic candidate for the Presidency.

Eugene V. Debs, a wildly popular Socialist, was a compelling orator, convincing his audience of mainly working class Americans, and rightly, that he was a man who understood their problems. This was during an era of unbridled capitalism during which the working people were truly exploited. He had run for president in 1904 and 1908, and was a favorite as candidate for the  presidency by the Socialist Party.

    A trip into the Past

Following the campaigns of these four candidates during 1912 may seem to be a nostalgic experience, given the frenzied, incredibly expensive, and often smear-ridden campaigns of our own era, but the outcome should be fairly familiar -- the party suffering from a split ticket always loses. Moreover, TR's split with the Republicans not only guaranteed a victory for Woodrow Wilson but also guaranteed that the Republican party, relegating its progressive members to the sidelines, would be left in the hands of its conservative wing.

Eugene Debs in 1912 had garnered for the Socialists the highest percentage of the vote -- 6% -- that the party in the United States had ever received. But the Socialists, having no other leader to come up to the fire and eloquence of  Debs when their leader retired due to ill health and simple weariness, never matched the high point in voting numbers they enjoyed in 1912. However, socialist ideas did persist into the Franklin D. Roosevelt era.

Chace muses that, had Theodore Roosevelt managed to capture the Republican nomination in 1912, the Republican party might well have a different face today -- more progressive, less business oriented, more socially inclined, looking to the future, though that's what dreams are made of. Wilson's presidency, however, on the heels of the Taft conservativism, did usher in an international and activist presidency. Together with the social measures advocated by Eugene Debs and curbs on the excesses of big business and international interventionism instituted by Theodore Roosevelt, Wilson, in turn, paved the way for Franklin D. Roosevelt's social innnovations during the Great Depression of the 1930s and its internationalism during and after World War II.

    Neoconservatism

The Republican party continues to be riven today, not between Conservatives and Progressives as in 1912, but between Conservatives and what has become known as "new conservatives" or, more commonly, "Neoconservatives." The party, in other words, has made its right-hand turn even more rightward.

As described by the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, Neoconservatism was born during and after World War II and the beginnings of the Cold War. It was then that the Republican leadership began defining themselves as fervently  anti-communist. Indeed, during the 1950s, the Republican party gave birth to the now largely discredited communist-hunting McCarthy hearings, and the subsequent black-listings and loyalty oaths that had shattered the lives and livelihoods of so many Americans. Building on the writings of such Neoconservatives as Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoertz, this wing of  the Republican party moved inexorably rightward during the protests against the Vietnam War of the 1960s, increasingly taking on the mantle of "Americanism" as opposed to the "anti-Americanism," as they termed it, of the New Left.

The Neoconservatives jettisoned the famous "trust-busting" of Theodore Roosevelt to instead embrace big business and its requirements. But they did borrow his "big stick" interventionist foreign policy and unilateralism in flexing US muscle, mainly to prop up US-friendly regimes. During the 1970s and 1980s, the Neoconservatives consolidated their power by attracting moneyed donors and creating right-wing think tanks numbering today (according to the 2000 conservative Heritage Foundation's guide) more than 300 groups in the Washington area alone. This in a well-planned effort to not only take control in Washington, but also to make their voices heard in the nation's media.

Among the most controversial of the conservative think tanks is the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) chaired by William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, and among whose members are numbered many members of the present Bush administration. The group has raised concern because of its apparent advocacy of military and economic efforts by the US in establishing its dominance in world affairs. An excellent explanation and commentary of the PNAC can be found here, in the Wikipedia.

The collapse of the Soviet Union, not to mention the Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan administration, may well have taken the wind out of the sails of Neoconservatism had not the attacks of September 11, 2001, given neoconservatism  a new raison d'etre and given George W. Bush a new and tremendously effective "Big Stick."

    The Inheritors Plus

So along with the Inheritors of the 1912 election, mentioned by Chace, is numbered today PNAC, The American Enterprise Institute, The Heritage Foundation, The Center for Strategic and International Studies, numerous other conservative and Neoconservative groups, and a congress, executive office, and judiciary dominated by the Neoconservative agenda. Among the above mentioned think tanks, The Heritage Foundation is the most powerful, with a budget in 2000 of $32.5 million. Many writers on the Left say that the Republican party is crumbling from within directly as a result of the battles between the fiscally conservative moderates of the party's center and the Far Right, the Christian Right, and the hawkish Neoconservatives. But with the powerful above mentioned think tanks and their apparently unending supply of money, it appears that Kim Mecklenburg's moderate, fiscally conservative Republican party might be difficult to find any time in the near future.

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Click to buy 1912-Wilson, Roosevelt,Taft,&Debs-The Election that Changed the Country

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