IMPACTS, LEGACIES, AND ROLES

Historical Minor Parties

“It takes more than that to kill a Bull-Moose!”

The Bull-Moose Party

The Progressive Party of 1912

Platforms: Women’s suffrage, social welfare assistance for women and children, farm relief, revisions in banking, health insurance in industries, and worker’s compensation

Beliefs similar to Wilson

The Bull-Moose Party and the 1912 Election

The 1912 election pinned Republican incumbent William Howard Taft against the democratic challenger, Woodrow Wilson. Running under the Bull-Moose ticket, Roosevelt gained the support of defecting Republicans. With the Republican Party split, Wilson won the election. The Party dissolved in 1914 after doing poorly in state and local elections, and with the refusal of Roosevelt to run for a second time at the national level.

The Grand Old Party (GOP)

First presidential candidate, John C. Fremont in 1856

Originally centered in New England and the Midwest

Grew out of conflicts regarding the expansion of slavery into the new Western territories, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854

The Grand Old Party (GOP) Founding

The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed previous compromises that had excluded slavery from the newly formed territories.

The act served as a unifying agent for the abolitionists, and split the Democratic and Whig parties

“Anti-Nebraska” protest meetings in 1854Previous members of the abolitionist Free-Soil,

Democrat, and Whig parities joined together to form the Republican Party, or Grand Old Party as it was nicknamed (GOP), after Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican Party.

The Movement from Minor to Major

The Republican Party won control of the House of Representatives in 1858, moving the party from a minor party into the major political field.

The Populist Party

Also known as the People’s PartyEvents which sparked the Party’s Founding:

A economic depression in the agricultural areas in the western and southern states prior to the Industrial Revolution

In the 1880s, a drought in the wheat-growing areas of the Great Plains coupled with low prices for southern cotton caused many tenant farmers to fall deep into debt

By the 1890s, the depression worsened, causing some industrial workers to begin to share these farm families opinions

Combined with long-held grievances against railroads, lenders, grain-elevator owners, and others with whom the farmers conducted business, the Populist Party was formed.

Populist Party Platforms

More federal intervention in the current economic depression

Curtail corporate abuses Prevent poverty among

farming and working-class families

Cuban independence Statehood for the territories

and the District of Columbia Western Populist

organizations called for women’s suffrage

Free coinage of Silver

Rise of the Populists

In 1890, the Populists won control of the Kansas State Legislature and had representatives in the national senate

In 1892, the party was officially founded by merging the Knights of Labor and the Farmers’ Alliance

The Fall of the Populist Parties

Between 1892 and 1896, however, the party failed to make further gains, in part because of fraud, intimidation, and violence by Southern Democrats.

By 1896, two factions within the party developed, the Fusion Populists and the Mid-Roaders. Fusion Populists merged with the Democratic Party

After failing to secure the win in the 1900 election, Populist party members either retired from politics or joined Eugene Debs in the Socialist Party

The Party experienced a slight resurgence in 1904, but officially disbanded soon after

The Reform Party of the United States of America (The Reform Party USA or RPUSA)

Officially founded in 1995, by Ross Perot Perot founded the party as an

alternative to the Republican and Democratic Parties, stating that the American people had become disillusioned with the two-major parties

Platforms: Fiscal responsibility, job creation and an “America First” policy, protecting the environment, energy independence from foreign sources

Ross Perot and the 1996 Election

Bill Clinton (D), Bob Dole (R), and Ross Perot (Reform)

Perot received 18.9% of the popular vote, the highest percentage since Roosevelt ran under the Bull-Moose Party

Blamed for splitting the Republican vote, winning Clinton the election