WI: Teddy Roosevelt does better in the 1912 election?

Okay, this is my last WI today, I promise. I'm thinking of doing another TL, and I'm trying to test out the water, as it were. One of my ideas is that Roosevelt does much better in the 1912 presidential election--not good enough to win, mind, but good enough to definitively establish the Progressives as a powerful party.

Is it possible and how would one do it? I'm imagining a Progressive-Socialist alliance helping out here.
 
You would have to butterfly WWI as we know it. Wilson clamped down hard on all the left-wing isms under the pretext of wartime emergency. GOP would have to collapse. TNF might be doing a TL on this, where the Dems and conservative GOP merge to create the D-R.
 
You would have to butterfly WWI as we know it. Wilson clamped down hard on all the left-wing isms under the pretext of wartime emergency. GOP would have to collapse. TNF might be doing a TL on this, where the Dems and conservative GOP merge to create the D-R.

Well, with the hardcore pressure on them afforded by a more powerful Progressive party, I can easily imagine the collapse of the GOP, with their luminaries fleeing to the Democrats. No D-R, I think, though. Just a radically enlarged Dem.
 
It seems to me one would need to have some one other than Woodrow Wilson as the Democratic candidate; he takes away too many progressive votes. A compromise on Underwood might do the trick.
 
The problem is, the Progressives in 1912 were pretty much a one-man show; they only ran for President, and maybe some other smaller offices, while the Socialists ran for many smaller offices nationwide. The results were the Socialists gaining (IIRC from my history textbook) over a thousand offices nationwide, while the Progressives collapsed. To be a longer-lasting party, the Progressives have to run in state and local races and in general be less of a one-man show.
 
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