alternatehistory.com

And the last of the party nomination posts is done! Two more posts to go before the main part of Union and Liberty officially ends. I'm aiming to have the final post on New Years Eve, with the epilogue posts running into 2017.

Part One Hundred Forty-Two: The 1912 Republican Nomination

Stuck in the Middle:
If the Democrats were itching to get back into the White House, the Republicans were even more. They had been out of the White House ever since William Jennings Bryan lost to William McKinley twelve years ago and had struggled to find a way to recover. Ideologically, the Republican Party frequently found themselves ideologically squeezed on policy. The Progressives attacked the Republicans from the left, and the Democrats attacked the Republicans on the right, leaving the Republicans flailing against both sides. Frequently, all this would do is alienate potential supporters on both sides. For the party of John C. Fremont to rebuild, they would need to firmly reestablish themselves as distinct from the other major parties.

Early on, the front runners for the Republican nomination were two Senators, Champ Clark of Missouri and Lawrence Yates Sherman of Illinois. Both had previously run for president unsuccessfully, but now they each saw their chance. The 1912 Republican nomination was most notable for the absence of William Jennings Bryan, who would not return from the political wilderness for another year. Bryan was not completely silent - he made several speeches decrying American annexation of California and the United States' entrance into the Weltkongress - but Bryan remained silent on the nomination fight. The absence of Bryan greatly diminished the influence of rural Republicans and gave candidates from urban areas a boost. This spurred the likes of former New Jersey governor Leon Abbett, who launched a last chance candidacy in 1912 at the age of 76. Massachusetts Senator John Weeks entered the race for the nomination as a strong New England regional candidate, as did Job E. Hedges, chairman of the New York Republican Committee who was spurred on by New York City mayor Charles Evans Hughes[1].

The path to the nomination was difficult and became a divisive slugfest at many times during the campaign. Champ Clark won the Republican primary in Champoeg, but he was immediately set upon by Sherman and Hedges for his support for Roosevelt's intervention in the Great War. When Sherman made anti-Catholic remarks in a speech[2], Hedges, whose New York constituency heavily courted Catholic voters, jumped on him for using "Southern Democrat" language that would alienate voters. When Hedges said national regulation of wage and hour laws was overstepping the bounds of the federal government and cautioned against the concentration of power in the executive office that Roosevelt had built, Abbett, Sherman, and Clark called Hedges out on abandoning the average American. These constant attacks showed that the Republican Party could disagree with both parties on many issues individually, but finding a common stance was difficult.

Champ Clark's interventionist stance was a boon in previous years, but it became a hindrance in 1912. Isolationism and opposition to Roosevelt's foreign policy had been one of the greatest differences between the Republicans and the Progressives, and with the Democrats leaning toward empire with Brice's nomination in 1908 and George Oliver's returning influence, there was feeling that the party needed an isolationist as the nominee to set them apart. In Itasca, it was another story. Itasca had gained territory from the Great War, true, but it was at a cost of trade for many of the state's Republicans, Especially Duluth had suffered with the decline of Great Lakes trade during and after the war. The Itasca primary was won in a narrow contest between Sherman and Weeks. Champ Clark quickly faded from the nomination race after coming in fourth in Itasca and received only a handful of delegates at the convention. Marquette, Vermont, and oddly for this early in the 20th century, Vandalia also held Republican primaries[3]. All three nonbinding primaries went for different candidates. Lawrence Yates Sherman, coming off his victory in Itasca, also won the neighboring state of Marquette. Vermont went to John Weeks, while Vandalia was a surprisingly close three way race between Weeks, Hedges, and Sherman.

As the Republican National Convention opened in Madison Square Garden, there was no clear front-runner for the nomination. On the first ballot, Weeks, Sherman, Hedges, and even William Jennings Bryan were all close in the top four positions. Weeks came out ahead on the first ballot with a lock on the New England delegates, but it was not nearly enough for him to make a strong push without winning over several rival candidates. The shocking support for Bryan created a loud rumor of a "draft Bryan" effort or Bryan wanting to jump back into the political fray. However, while Bryan did attend the convention as a delegate, he stated outright that he would not accept the nomination of the Republican Party that year. The balloting went on for several days with little movement and no sign of support coalescing behind any one candidate. On the twelfth through sixteenth ballots, Champ Clark briefly bubbled up to the top tier of candidates, but he faded back down soon after back with Abbett and other favorite sons. The balloting for the Republican National Convention went on for over sixty ballots and six days before a nominee was chosen. Supposedly, after the fifty-eighth ballot, Lawrence Yates Sherman met with Charles Evans Hughes and Job Hedges at two o'clock in the morning. They hammered out an agreement, and Hedges, while he did not withdraw himself from the nomination, directed Hughes to use New York delegates to quietly build support for a compromise ticket. By the sixty-fifth ballot, that ticket had shown itself. Weeks bled support starting with Connecticut delegates while Abbett withdrew from the nomination, lending support to Sherman. On the sixty-fifth ballot, Sherman had received just shy of the majority of votes with Hedges and Weeks now as his main opponents. Hedges, the great orator that he was, made a grand speech about the need for compromise among Republicans and that "we have shown with this convention that we are the broadest coalition of Americans of any of the major parties. We Republicans, when faced with opposing ideas, do not dig ourselves in like the donkey or butt heads like the moose. No! Republicans seek out dialogue, we seek out moderation, and we seek out compromise to create the best path of many for these United States to follow to prosperity!"

Job Hedges' Convention Speech has gone down as one of the greatest in political history[4]. Hedges had suddenly found a message for the Republican Party, a message of moving forward but doing so with moderation, cautiously testing the waters but forging ahead on a path when that path was tested and proven. However, while it was Hughes and Hedges that created the circumstance, it was Lawrence Yates Sherman who would be the party's nominee. Hedges had great appeal in New York and areas touched by New York City, but he could not compete with Sherman in appealing to both the Mid-Atlantic and the Old Northwest, two key regions for the Republicans to keep. Sherman did see Hedges as valuable, however. The last time the Republicans had won the state of New York was when John C. Fremont himself won reelection in 1868. The dream of the Republican Party to carry New York once again drove Job E. Hedges to the vice presidential nomination, with Sherman's support of course[5]. With Hedges on the ticket, and the growth of New York City as an urban area, that dream had a greater possibility of coming true than it had in a long time.

[1] Job E. Hedges was a close associate of Charles Evans Hughes and in OTL was the Republican candidate for governor of New York in 1912.
[2] Sherman appears to have been somewhat anti-Catholic in OTL. One of his concerns that led him to oppose the League of Nations was that too many members were Catholic countries so the League would be dominated by the Vatican.
[3] With Vandalia solidly Republican, the state GOP extended the primary to the presidency as well as state offices.
[4] Hedges was a very good orator. Even Mark Twain supposedly called Hedges "the best extempore speaker he had heard."
[5] Choosing the Vice President from somebody with such an obscure position is surprisingly not that odd for the time period. In OTL, Chester Arthur was New York GOP Committee Chairman when he was picked, and Garrett Hobart was Vice Chair of the Republican National Committee.