Arizona republican., 1912-07-31
Progressive Platforms

1ACit lo OIIG N6IN 4CHiclI que lIAIlIS about the national progressive party as disclosed in the state conventions for the choice of delegates to the Chi cego convention.-the failure to make any definite declaration regarding the tariff. This failure was marked in the state convention of Arizona yes the day before. It is true, in the Ari- zona platform there is a brief allu- sion to the tariff question: as brief as MT RoOsevelt's remarks on that vital subject in the course of his precon- vention campaign and just as mean ingless. There is not an idea in it which the most stubborn standpatter would fail to endorse
 Another remarkable thing is the cIoseness with which the progressive platforms are modelled after the varied utterances of the colonel within the last six months. They abound in the denunciation of the bosses, of special privilege the endorsement of the rule of the people and other matters which have been much mouthed over at Oyster Bay
 The prOgressives of Arizona yester- day went little farther, we believe, than they have in most other states. It may he said, to use a classical phrase, they went the whole hog" The platform includes a demand for the recall of judicial decisions which Mir. Roosevelt proposed in his Colum- bus speech and which he devoted some time afterward to weakly de- lending. We doubt very much wheth- CT the Chicago convention will go so far.
 If as late as nine months ago such a proposition had been made to nine tenths of the gentlemen composing the convention yesterday. they would have indignantly declared it to be anar- chistic. The other blanks are distinct ly Rooseveltian. All of them have been approved by the colonel but of his approval upon, could be ad mitted. Thus, Loyalty are the progress sives going forward in this great movement to free themselves and the rest of the masses from the domina- tion of bosses.
 No true progressive may think for himself There is a boss destroyer at Oyster Bay who thinks frequently and rapidly and he has elected him self to do all the thinking for the third party His thoughts sometimes conflict but conflicts within single mind can be amicably adjusted
 The followers of MT. Roosevelt have divested themselves of all precon- ceived opinions on all public matters. They do not know now what they be- Iieve or all they believe. and they will not know until their leader, their all, has ceased changing his mind and settled upon policies less Protean than his have been since he announced his determination last spring to issue a call for himself in behalf of the peo- pie and become a reluctant candidate for the presidency. The blind are groping enthusiastically after a blind and wavering leader
 It has been charged that Mir. Roose- welt is the national progressive party this may seem it is so If MT. Roose- welt should decide tomorrow that the arithmetics are all wrong and that twice two is five instead of four his encouragement would probably receive the assent of his followers. At least none of them would take issue with him.
 The Roosevelt movement is not to be confounded with the movement of LaFollette. Murdock and the others who rose in revolt against Cannonism and Aldrichism. The former is moi even an outgrowth of the latter It is merely an attempted larceny of the progressive following of leaders whose movement was based on a demand fol a reform of the tariff. That demand was the life sand soul of and prac- ticaIIy all there was of the origina progressivism as opposed to stand patism.
 There is no such demand by Roose