These figures, analyzed calmly, after the issues and
passions have cooled into history, indicate two things. First,
the amazing personal popularity of Roosevelt, who, against the
opposition of the Republican Machine and all its ramifications,
had so easily defeated President Taft, the candidate of that
Machine. And secondly, it proved that Roosevelt, and not Taft,
really represented a large majority of what had been the
Republican Party. Therefore, it was the Taft faction which, in
spite of the plain evidence given at the choice of the delegates,
and at the Convention itself--evidence which the Machine tried to
ignore and suppress--it was the Taft faction and not Roosevelt
which split the Republican Party in 1912.
Had it allowed the preference of the majority to express itself
by the nomination of Roosevelt, there is every reason to believe
that he would have been elected. For we must remember that the
Democratic Platform was hardly less progressive than that of the
Progressives themselves.
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