From the superb Ken Burns series, The Roosevelts, I loved the following passage about Teddy Roosevelt as Governor of New York. Yes, TR was a Republican, but as the following passage makes clear, he was absolutely NOTHING like the Republicans of today. Regardless, TR was right then and he’s right today: Republicans, and more importantly the country, would be far better off if they adopted TR’s attitude towards government, business, the environment, etc., than the bizarre, warped, extreme positions they hold today.
P.S. I started off as a progressive Republican myself as a teenager, in the same line of thought as Teddy Roosevelt and many others (e.g., Bob LaFollette, Dwight Eisenhower, John Chaffee, Lowell Weicker, Jacob Javits, Nelson Rockefeller), but got the heck out of that party when I saw it taken over by supply siders (aka “Voodoo Economics”), racists and theocrats back in 1980. Sad to say, Republicans have only gotten (much) worse since then. I’m 100% confident that Teddy Roosevelt would not be a member of the Republican Party today (nor would Abraham Lincoln, of course, or Javits, LaFollette, probably George Romney, etc, etc.).
Boss Platt feared the new governor harbored what he called “altruistic ideas,” and was a little loose on questions affecting the right of a man to run his own business in his own way. He was right. Roosevelt promised to consult Platt as he went along, but he had concluded that it was neither wise nor safe for Republicans to take refuge in what he called “mere negation.” New circumstances demanded a new kind of reform – progressive reform. The Republican Party, he felt, should actually offer real solutions to real problems…the old natural laws of the marketplace were no longer adequate. Government, [Roosevelt] believed, needed to step in to tame the market’s excesses and maintain necessary order. Wrongs now had to be righted through legislation as well as persuasion. Roosevelt intended to strike a balance between what he called “mob rule” and improper corporate influence…In less than 6 months, he secured passage of bills that taxed corporations, limited working hours for women and children, improved sweatshop conditions, created or protected forest preserves…
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