National Politics: The 1912 Republican Nomination Race

A House Divided.

For the Republican Party the 1912 presidential election was a calamity. More than three hundred delegates walked out of the party's national convention and formed the Progressive Party to support Theodore Roosevelt for the presidency. President William Howard Taft, the Republican candidate, retained control of the diminished GOP. Had he been a more astute politician, he might have turned his many accomplishments as president to his advantage. His administration had added more land to the National Parks and National Forests and had broken up more trusts than Roosevelt had done in his seven and a half years as president. (Taft brought ninety legal actions against trusts in his four years as president; Roosevelt had brought forty-four during his nearly two terms.) Farmers were enjoying vast prosperity as prices and profits rose. The economy was dynamic and expansive; unemployment was low; and Wall Street profits were...

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