Cameron County press. [volume] (Emporium, Cameron County, Pa.) 1866-1922, 1905-12-21
ROOSEVELT THEIR CHOICE.
Managers of the Democracy Looking
to the President as a Pos
sible Leader.


tatives have been flocking to the
white house for several weeks past
offering allegiance to the president" :"
says the Washington correspondent
of the Chronicle. And his statement
is corroborated by the dispatches of
all other Washington correspondents.
This spectacle of the national lead
ers of the opposition party accepting,
or rather soliciting, the leadership of
the leader of the party in power is
extraordinary, but it is neither mex
plicable nor wholly unprecedented.
The democratic party managers
wanted Gen. Grant for their party
leader in 1868. True. Grant was not
then president, but it was well un-
derstood that he was to be the nom
inee of the republican party for the
presidency that year. Again in 1872
they accepted the leadership of Hor-
ace Greeley, until then the most con
spicuous republican perhaps in the
country, against Grant, the man who
had refused to be their leader. So
much for precedent
AS for the explanation, it is the
same now that it was in 1868 and
1872. Then the democratic party was
not coherent organization. 1t had
no principles upon which different
factions which claimed to be demo
cratic were agreed. These factions
were agreed only in their hostility to
the republican party and in hunger
for office and power. They were
ready to admit that their party was
discredited and that it had no leader
who enjoyed the confidence of sane
and patriotic people. Therefore they
were ready to borrow from the re-
publicans a leader who was known
to believe in something and to be
worthy of public confidence.
That is the case to-day. The demo
cratic party is a fortutous aggrega-
tion of discordant factions having
nothing in common but an appetite
and an irrational hatred of the party
in power. 1t has no leader whom
these factions can agree to follow and
who also enjoys the respect and CON
fidence of the rational public.
Hence the readiness of the mana
gers to go once more to the republic
ans for leader and this time to the
chosen and official head of that
party.
What we see is a repetition of the
tactics which failed at the inception
in 1868 and at the polls in 1872 and
which amounted then and amounts
now to confession of the unworthi-
ness of the democratic party and it's
leaders.
The eagerness of the managers to
make a democratic leader of Presi-
dent Roosevelt is merely a recognition
of his phenomenal popularity. 1t
does not mean that the democratic
party is growing better or that it ac-
cepts the principles by which Presi-
dent Roosevelt is actuated or that it
has any use for him or for anything
about him except his popularity, and
for that only as an instrument to rake
democratic chestnuts, mostly wormy,
from the fire.
Democrats were originally attract
ed to him. it is said, by his utterances
on the subject of railroad rate reguIa-
tion, but that was not because they
were satisfied with the legislation he
proposed. 1t was because they
thought that legislation would be
merely a first step toward the realiza-
tion of the communistic project of
government ownership of all the
railroads.
That is to say, they wanted to fol
low him because they thought he was
going to destruction, but he is not
going that way. On the contrary, he
proposes rate regulation partly be-
cause he believes it to be right and partly
because he believes it will head off the
movement in the direction of govern
ment ownership.
His direction, therefore, is diamet-
rically opposite to theirs in this re.
spect as in others. When they come
to see this they will want no more
of his leadership. His general direc-
tion is toward harbor of safety:
theirs is toward the breakers and the
reefs where there is certainty of ship
wreck
If they choose to follow in the direc-
tion he is leading well and good, but
there is every reason to believe they do
not. They may depend upon it that he
will never lead any party to the mani
fest destination of the democratic
party.
COMMENT AND OPINION