alternatehistory.com

As we all know, Theodore Roosevelt won the Republican nomination and then the Presidency in 1912, defeating Champ Clark, the Democratic nominee, getting an unprecedented third term and allowing him to pursue a new set of progressive reforms under the "New Nationalist" banner which helped solidify the Republican Party as the party of American progress and liberalism and led to the Democrats becoming the "conservative" party, but what if Theodore Roosevelt didn't win the Republican nomination in 1912 along with the Presidential elections in the same year? How would that affect the United States? Was the US party system developing into a "Liberal Republicans, Conservative Democrats" system inevitable? Or could it have been reversed with the Democrats becoming the "liberal" party and the Republicans becoming the "conservative" party (maybe President Philander Knox wins the nomination for the Republicans while Woodrow Wilson wins the Democratic nomination)?
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