A Stitch in Haste

I'm currently reading a book about the presidential election of 1912 — probably the most exciting vote since the early days of the Republic. As you may recall, there was a four-way race:

--The incumbent conservative Republican, William Howard Taft.

--The former President for whom he veeped, Theodore Roosevelt, who was so disenchanted with Taft's abandonment of progressivism that he quit the Republican party and started the Progressive Party, often called the "Bull Moose Party." (Try to imagine an alternative reality where a disgruntled Ronald Reagan had run against George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton in 1992!)

--The relatively obscure, anti-big-business, anti-political-machine governor of New Jersey, Democrat Woodrow Wilson.

--The anything but obscure Socialist union organizer, Eugene V. Debs.

I went into the book hoping to find analogies between the conservative-progressive schism in the Republican Party of nearly a century ago and the "Big Tent" tensions between social conservatives and libertarians in today's Republican Party. I'll try to report back on that when I've finished the book.

Anyway, I found this snippet astounding, concerning the Socialist Party platform going into the 1912 election:

It furthered proposed to abolish the Senate and to deny the president the veto power over legislation. It would also deny the Supreme Court the right to declare laws unconstitutional, and eliminate federal district and circuit courts.
...
All these measures were but "a preparation for the workers to seize the whole powers of the government."

Curious, the Socialists of a century ago wanted to strip the Supreme Court of its jurisdiction, indeed eliminate most of the federal judiciary if necessary, in order to devolve power down to "the people" (i.e., as much direct democracy as possible).

Which party is proposing similar maneuvers today, through targeted jurisdiction-stripping and using ballot proposals to circumvent the traditional governing process and judicial review?

How the world turns.

Meanwhile, libertarian critter chronicles some analogies between today's conservatives and yesterday's Communists.

UPDATE: Red Guy in a Blue State reminds us that there are still Bull Moose Republicans.