ABSTRACT
Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive Party of 1912 still clung to life after their leader had humiliated his followers in 1916 by proposing that they nominate Henry Cabot Lodge for President. Progressives must be elusive, surprising, hard to catch, and impossible to hold. They must scorn the entanglement of prejudice, and for the sake of mobility cast aside all those antique generalizations about the intrinsic virtues and vices of either party. The moment they begin to say that "permanent progressive advance through the Tweedledum party is impossible," or that the "Tweedledee party can best secure," they are lost. This is what Messrs. Rowell, Gifford, Pinchot, Robins, Garfield, White, and Ickes are now saying. They have issued a statement—date line Chicago, December fifth—announcing that the Democratic party is "impossible," that the Republican party can "best secure," and would not the Old Guard please create an Executive Committee of ten reactionaries and six Progressives in order to promote social justice.
