Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 101, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 April 1913 — The Michigan Election. [ARTICLE]

The Michigan Election.

Michigan is something of a straw —quite big enough to serve as well as any other straw to show which way the wind is blowing. We ourselves did not attach too much importance to the municipal elections mentioned last week as indicating whether or not the Bull Moose party, as a party* has gained a footing in the country. But Michigan is too big not to be really significant. And the change there is striking.Last November the state gave Roosevelt his biggest plurality. Now the Roosevelt party is a bad third to the Republican and the Democratic parties. For the life of us we can draw but one inference. It is that the Bull Moose strength of last autumn was not Bull Moose strength at all, not at all the expression of a full and permanent commitment to a new party, but something else. What else?

We do not pretend that our answer is more than guesswork, but we should say that the great showing made by the new party last autumn was due mainly to two things—Roosevelt’s personal popualrity and indignation with the Republican party. Perhaps we ought to add a third cause—the general state of restlessness and discontent in the electorates; but that is hardly worth considering in any reasoning that looks to the future—even the immediate future. The immediate future is quite worth considering. The Democrats are engaged in passing a tariff bill: They indicate a purpose to deal stfongly, perhaps radically, with other matters not less important. They conceivably may—and we sincerely trust they will—use their power so wisely and conscientiously as to strengthenn themselves even in their first appeal to the country. But there is no denying that such success as that is extremely rare in the history of parties, either in this country or in England. Ordinarily the strongest and best administrations, as well as the weakest, have faced reactions of public opinion, and have suffered reverses, the first time they went to the country. If there is such a reaction in 1914, which of the two opposition parties seems most likely to prcrUj; by it? The one that does will be the one most likely .to survive. The few indications oif the public mind that we have had since November are distinctly favorable to the view that the Republicans rather than the socalled Progressives are likely to be the real opponents of the Democrats in the / 1914 elections—(Quoted from Harper’s Weekly of April 19, 1913.)