Wilson And Roosevelt Pros And Cons

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On June 6, 1912, the Republican National Committee convened in Chicago, Illinois. The blood feud between Roosevelt, Taft, and the supporters for each did not stop on the way in the door. Roosevelt’s supporters were quick to claim that Taft had acquired many of his delegates through patronage or fraud, but it was Taft and his political cronies that had the last laugh in the standoff when they disqualified many of Roosevelt’s delegates (Kolasky, 2011, para. 15). On Friday, June 14th, Roosevelt’s supporters sent him a telegram reading, “C.Q.D”, meaning “Come Quickly, Disaster” (Kolasky, 2011, para. 15). That evening, Roosevelt broke another campaign tradition by boarding a train in New York to make his way to the Chicago convention as quickly …show more content…

Just like in the Republican primaries, the issue of anti-trust law was at the forefront of debate. Wilson seemed to agree with Roosevelt’s policy that, “big business is not dangerous because it is big,” but only when “its bigness is an unwholesome inflation created by privileges and exemptions which it ought not to enjoy” (Kolasky, 2011, para. 27). Both Wilson and Roosevelt continued the break-neck campaign pace they had begun in their respective primaries, while Taft, wallowing in the misery of the Republican convention, largely stayed off the campaign trail (Kolasky, 2011, para. 38). On October 14, on his way to a speech in Milwaukee, Roosevelt was approached by a man and shot with Colt revolver. The shooter, John Shrank, from New York, had obsessed over the fact that Roosevelt was running for a third term (Kolasky, 2011, para. 40). Incredibly for Roosevelt, the bullet had been cushioned by the 150-page, folded-up speech he was going to deliver, and when his campaigners urged him to seek medical attention, Roosevelt told them, “I will deliver this speech or die. One or the other” (Kolasky, 2011, para. …show more content…

Roosevelt and Taft were split on the tariff, while Wilson’s New Freedom platform agreed with Roosevelt on a reduction of duties on manufactured goods. Roosevelt championed women’s suffrage, while Taft and Wilson left the topic out of the debate. Today, Clinton and Sanders argued for equal pay for women while Donald Trump and the Republican Party pledged to defund planned parenthood. Clinton and Trump wanted to raise taxes on the super-rich or put an end to the tax loopholes that they so often take advantage of. Sanders called for breaking up the largest banks in the nation; Trump and Clinton stayed mum on the topic. In a way, Sanders’ campaign promises were very much a modern version of Teddy Roosevelt’s from 1912: changes to the minimum wage laws, conservation of the environment, women’s rights, changes to workplace environments and benefits, and effecting change in big business (Greenspan, 2012, para. 7). However, there is and never has been a solid line drawn between one person’s political beliefs and another’s. Two people may feel differently about some issues, while strongly agreeing on others. The most striking similarities between the 1912 and 2016 election seasons come when you recognize why the winners won and the losers lost. In 1912, Teddy Roosevelt and William Taft could not agree on the issue of trusts. In fact, they downright hated each other on a personal level. When Roosevelt split from the Republican Party, he

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