Jasper County Democrat, Volume 15, Number 53, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 October 1912 — COLONEL IS CRAFTY [ARTICLE]

COLONEL IS CRAFTY

AUDACIOUS EFFORT TO CORRAL ALL THE PROGRESSIVES WILL PROVE FUTILE. SHOWS WILSON’S STRENGTH Roosevelt Presumes on Ignorance of Hls Hearers and Readers When He Says Bosses and Representatives of Privilege Are Flocking to Democrats.

Colonel Roosevelt, with that aggressive audacity so‘ strongly characteristic of his nature. In the effort he is making to stampede progressive Republicans who are disposed to stay with the regular organization and then under the cracking noise of his own whip to corral them in the Bull Moose pen, is giving testimony of the growing strength of the Democratic nominee.

For instance, in his speech delivered before the state Progressive convention at Des Moines, he is quoted as saying that he found everywhere among reactionary Republicans a growing purpose to support Woodrow Wilson, on the theory that President Taft was beaten already, and that the only hope of preserving the old parties was to support the Democratic ticket and defeat the Progressives. He then added: “Where Mr. Wilson is getting support of that type, we have the right to ask independent Democrats who believe in the principles for which Democracy nominally stands, to come with us. I ask every Democrat who really believes In the right of the people to rule to come with us, for every representative of privilege, every boss is going to his side." Of course, in making this statement, Colonel Roosevelt was presuming upon the ignorance of those who might hear or read his utterances, for, as Col. Henry Watterson has well Bald of him, “intelligent 'persons who chance to be led, by interest or by curiosity, to attend Roosevelt orations will feel that their intelligence has been insulted, or that the orator should be attended by a keeper." True, Republicans as well as non-partisan voters, are flocking to the support of Governor Wilson, but none of those Republicans are reactionaries or standpatters, as Colonel Roosevelt well knows. He is thrusting forward a puan of straw to frighten Progressive Republicans away from the support of President Taft. Especially audacious is his assertion that "every representative of privilege, every boss is going to his (Wilson's) side,” when the fact has been indisputably established that the two biggest and brazenest representatives of special privilege in the world, the steel trust and the harvester trust, are the inspiration and chief support of the new party movement. Without the influence of these two concerns In his behalf, Teddy would hardly be known in the running. The truth is. Colonel Roosevelt is both an opportunist and a Jesuit in politics. He seizes upon the present time, when discontent is general in the land over the effect of policies for which he himself is partly responsible, as the opportune moment, with the assistance of the dominant trusts of the age and by making platitudlious promises to gather the army of discontented to his standard and augment this strength by fooling others who have admired his wonderfully vigorous personality, to again ride into power, only to be dislodged by revolution.