current GOP civil war is an eerie repeat of their 1912 loss

Picture the scene. America is angry, and heading into a historic presidential election. The Republicans think they have the nation behind them. They have a frontrunner, a Romney-like man who doesn’t follow conventional Christianity but is liked by the big-money boys on Wall Street and corporate America, the men who have always run the party.

But then the country-club Republican is challenged by a Palin-like egotistical populist who is popular with the grass roots, a candidate who loves guns and hunting in the great Northwest, almost as much as they love attention. The populist upstart leads a movement that is angry about government-imposed tax duties, hates compromisers, and uses lots of religious rhetoric, talking about battling for the Lord and Armageddon, and singing “Onward Christian Soldiers”. The populists are actually very sneaky: they managed to attract money and support from the corporations who logically would have supported the country-club candidate, and they return the favor by supporting policies that protect corporations, thus outflanking the country-club candidate. The populists are united in their desire to block the country-club candidate from getting the Republican presidential nomination.

Is this a forecast for a Romney-Palin race for the nomination in 2012, or perhaps Romney-Bachmann? Nope. This is a description of the race that happened exactly one hundred years earlier. In 1912 country-club Republican William Taft, who admitted he didn’t believe in the divinity of Christ, faced a rebellion from populist and all-around hot dog Teddy Roosevelt. Taft maintained his frontrunner status and secured the Republican nomination, but Teddy split the conservative movement and ran a third-party campaign. As a result, the Democrat, Woodrow Wilson, won 40 states and 435 electoral votes. A Democrat won places like Idaho, Wyoming, Oklahoma. The 1912 race, not unlike the social battles over health reform and rightwing extremism that preceded the 2012 election, was marred by violence: Teddy himself was shot in the chest just before the election, and was saved only because his fifty-page speech was in his pocket. Characteristically, Teddy went on to give a ninety-minute speech, still seeping blood. Shortly after the election loss, Roosevelt’s populist movement, which really didn’t stand for anything other than cheering for Teddy, folded.